On the day of the Democratic primary in New York, Borrero spends the morning walking around to polls and chatting with people, which is something he likes to do on election day. Then he has a meeting with his attorneys (Borrero loves lawyers) to discuss the possibility of suing WADO. He doesn't arrive at the office until late afternoon. He breezes in and rants for awhile about the election and other various things, and then a couple of editors troop in and sit down on Borrero's big black leather couch to brief him on the biggest stories for tomorrow's paper.
The stories include the primary, a follow-up to a story about a prominent Dominican in New Jersey who shot his ex-girlfriend on her wedding day, and an investigative piece about which someone has tipped Borrero and which he is particularly interested in, involving Bob Menendez, the congressman, and his alleged lobbying on behalf of some New Jersey companies with ties to Sudan, a nation accused of harboring terrorists. Every few minutes or so, one of his phones rings. After the editors leave, he turns on the television for a few minutes, which is broadcasting a Giuliani press conference. Borrero riffs for a few minutes on the mayor, and then he suddenly pauses. "I am starving," he says. "I forgot to eat lunch."
Borrero hates politicians. He thinks they're corrupt and self-serving, and even those who have high ideals before they take office usually turn dirty after they're elected. Something he likes to say is, "There are a lot of creepy people in this town, and they're all in public office." Borrero's third and current wife, Ruth Colon, was nearly fired twice from her job at the city Housing Authority, thanks to some of her husband's more extreme Giuliani bashing. Not surprisingly, he has stirred up criticism from some in the Hispanic community who find his incendiary style divisive and extreme. "He has a reputation for picking fights," as one person put it.
But many are also quick to give Borrero credit for taking on the role of a watchdog in a community that in the past has tended to shy away from criticism of its own. "The ethnic press in New York has always tended to protect and even promote the political leadership of its own community," says the Voice's Barrett. "Gerson's always had a much more skeptical attitude."
People say Borrero has fashioned himself in the image of his predecessor and late friend, Manuel de Dios Unanue, a muckraking writer and editor of El Diario who later also had a radio show titled "What Others Try to Silence." In 1992, de Dios was shot to death in a Queens Restaurant by Colombian drug lords he had attacked in print. When Borrero was appointed editor in chief by publisher Rossana Rosado, who was a friend, some questioned whether he had the journalistic credentials for the job, his only news experience being as a commentator after spending much of his career in public relations.
Meanwhile, other Hispanic journalists in New York say the 88-year-old paper, which for years served a mostly Puerto Rican Latino minority in the city, sorely needs to change with the times. Last spring, a few reporters left to start Nueva Era, a Spanish-language weekly with a more modern flavor. "[El Diario's journalists are] always writing about people that don't have heat in their houses, or people that need a liver or kidney," one of the defectors was quoted as saying at the time. "We think the Hispanic community is much more than that."
Borrero waves away such criticism, pointing out that Nueva Era folded within a few months. "These are my readers," he said. "I'll be damned if I'm going to pay more attention to some visiting dignitary than I am to a woman who has her ceiling falling off." But Hispanic media has suddenly become hot on Madison Avenue and Wall Street. (El Diario's parent company, Entravision, recently staged a $750 million IPO; NBC recently paid $2.7 billion for Spanish language broadcaster Telemundo.) The paper's comfortable reign as the only Spanish language daily in town has drawn to a close. In 1998, Newsday began publishing a competitor, Hoy, whose circulation recently surpassed El Diario's.
Next page: "He hasn't singled anyone out -- he's pretty much insulted us all"