Borderland Beat is an English language blog that reports news about the Mexican Drug War. The blog was started in April 2009 by an anonymous individual using the pseudoynm Buggs, who remains the sole owner. The blog has been referred to and quoted in the New York Times, Small Wars Journal and the Houston Chronicle. In an article published in May 2012, journalist Gary Moore, described Borderland Beat as follows: "An English-language digest Web site called Borderland Beat forms a lonely watchtower on the Mexico battlements, manned by a small cadre of Mexican-Americans, who set themselves the vital mission of archiving any available news on Mexico's meltdown." A Der Spiegel article includes a description of the main features of the Borderland Beat website. On average, there are between 7 and 10 news stories posted each day. In addition to the news pages, the site hosts a self-contained open forum which runs in parallel to the main news pages, where any registered user can post. Editorial control is overseen by site administrators, using pseudonyms; Chivis Martinez, who also writes for the news pages, together with a number of recognized contributors. In addition to recognized contributions, news stories are continually appearing on the open forum, where most remain; a few do get promoted to the news pages if they are deemed sufficiently interesting and factual by an administrator. As of November 2014, the blog has had over 141,483,351 million visits since December 2009.
Danger to bloggers reporting Cartel violence
After the discovery in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico on November 9, 2011 of the body of the fourth blogger to be killed in the space of a month, for posting online information about drug cartels, The Daily Dot, MSNBC and Der Spiegel each produced an article outlining the dangers such internet activity posed. For comment, The Daily Dot and MSNBC turned to Borderland Beat administrator "Overmex", while Der Spiegel interviewed Borderland Beat contributor "Gerardo". In the interviews, the two bloggers reiterated their determination to continue reporting on the ongoing drug war, and not to be intimidated by the drug cartels' threats. Quoting from an article in Bloomberg Businessweek: "To protect contributors, the editors of the blog Borderland Beat, which has a reputation as one of the most reliable sources of information on Mexico's drug violence, say even they don’t know the identity of some of the site's major contributors. Posts are often passed through intermediaries to protect secrecy. "They could be journalists, cops, politicians, maybe even cartel members themselves," says one of the blog's editors, who uses the nickname Buggs."
Trusted source
Borderland Beat has been used as a reference in academic papers submitted under the auspices of:
Robert Bunker regularly writes about the Mexican Drug War for Small Wars Journal, and often refers to Borderland Beat for material. His May 31, 2012 blog post "Mexican Cartel Tactical Note #12" quotes extensively from a Borderland Beat news story. Likewise, InSight Crime frequently uses Borderland Beat as a reference source and they have also reproduced several Borderland Beat news articles in full.
