At a cluster of desks at one edge of the cavernous newsroom during my visit, Almudena Toral, the director of digital video, was tweaking a segment — animated by a newly arrived Venezuelan designer —<br />that she explained as follows: “What should I do if ICE comes for me in my house?”<br />Nearby, the data journalism team was putting the finishing touches on a statistical analysis showing<br />the lack of legal representation of undocumented immigrants who go before immigration judges.<br />Mr. Coronell was an early recruit of Isaac Lee, whom Univision — under the relatively new ownership of a group led by the media investor<br />(and Democratic donor) Haim Saban — hired in late 2010 as the news chief with a basic mandate: Build a bigger and better newsroom.<br />“On the one hand, we knew that it would have a terrible impact on the Hispanic community in the United States,” Univision’s<br />president of news, Daniel Coronell, told me as we sat in his office overlooking the buzzing central newsroom.<br />As a onetime journalist in Colombia — where his work linked onetime drug lords to political leaders — Mr. Lee knew something his competitors did not: Some of the best<br />and bravest journalists in the world were on the sidelines, chased out of their newsrooms or home countries by murderous regimes their work had exposed.<br />(In response, Univision pulled out of showing Trump-owned beauty pageants; Mr. Trump retaliated with a lawsuit and a letter informing Univision<br />that its personnel were no longer welcome at the Trump golf course here.)<br />With a team that includes 75 new hires in the last two years, Mr. Echevarría has started new units for special investigative projects, podcasts,<br />and data journalism, mobile video and informational graphics.
