Well-Known Designer Comments, Teaches and Inspires Online

Mario Garcia’s perspective. It’s something that’s always fascinated me. I look forward to the fleeting times when I get to talk with him here at Poynter. It is always a privilege.

Traveling the world more often then not, Mario is in and out of newsrooms and in conversations with some of the most influential people in journalism. He’s always way ahead of the curve with what’s possible for the delivery of information. But even without that — the stories he tells, the way he observes people and the world and his particular take on life is something well worth a listen.

Guess what? Now I can get a glimpse of what he’s seeing and experiencing every day. You can, too, with TheMarioBlog, his new-found passion. Paired with another online invention, TheMarioClassroom, you can tap into his ideas about the crafts of journalism.

He’s a busy man, yet somehow he manages to find time for this informative and very entertaining daily blog. In this e-mail interview, Garcia shares his ideas about what he’s producing and why.

Sara Quinn: You’ve taught at universities, through your work at Poynter and lots of newsrooms. What drives you to want to teach and to share your ideas?

Mario Garcia: I think of me as, first and foremost a teacher, truly. I started my career teaching, first at the high school level, then community college, then Syracuse University, University of South Florida, and, of course, Poynter. And not a day goes by that I don’t teach a newsroom seminar, or deal with students worldwide who are working on dissertations and theses and write to me for information and guidance.

It is a role I cherish. I think that we are all the result of good teaching and good teachers. This is a way of paying back. The older I get, the more I attach importance to the concept of passing on what we have been lucky to learn, to a future generation. For me, it is a sort of mission, nothing short of “the plan.”

What events or conversations led you to start your blog?

Garcia: You may laugh, but I consider myself the last of the bloggers. I kid Roger Black all the time that he titled his blog “The Last Blog,” but that I joined the world of bloggers almost two years after he did. 

I have to say that it was my son Mario Jr. who kept urging me to do this. He created blog space for me on our Web site, and I still decided that I was not ready. Then, Ron Reason and I were working on this project in Lagos, Nigeria, and that is what it took. Leave it to Ron to give me that final push during our long chats in rainy Lagos.

By the time I left Ron, I had decided that I would do a “practice blog” to see how I liked it, if I had something to say, and if it interfered too much with my daily routine — especially running. So, I did. And on the 17th day of writing a daily blog, NOT for publication, I decided I liked it, and started doing it. I am on day 92 today, and have managed to do it daily.

What has feedback been like for your blog postings and for your new design lessons?

Garcia: Incredible reaction. Although, for reasons that escape me, I have more e-mail feedback than actual comments left on the blog itself. I get from 12 to 20 comments sent to me by e-mail daily, some of which I pick to comment on during my Saturday or Sunday Sequels on the blog.


The videos are extremely popular, even though, as you can see, they are primitive in their technical execution. I know nothing about video, so I just put the camera on top of a coffee pot, or on the edge of a bookshelf, and press GO.

I try to make TheMarioClassroom lessons about three minutes long. The world moves fast. People have little patience for anything, including lessons. I have planned a series of about 30 videos, and so far so good. 

For me, the teacher, the idea that these videos can be seen by students anywhere, is a great sense of satisfaction. Forget the quality of the video itself, it is the lesson that counts. But, I am working on learning more about how to make the videos.


How do you decide when something is “blog-worthy?”

Garcia: That is the difficult part. What may be blog-worthy to me, might be boring or non-consequential to someone else. I start with the premise that blogging is highly personal, and that the people who come to read a blog already have some interest in the subjects that I am interested in.

I have learned that blogging makes your senses come alive: you must let the senses guide you. What you see, what you hear, what you smell, what you touch, it all becomes possible blog material. Not to mention what you eat –- I find out that people are sometimes more fascinated by my reference to a Nigerian soup made with melon seeds than to the three type fonts examined in that same blog. Go figure.

I mentioned a delicious lycheetini served by a Manhattan bar not long ago, and got a dozen e-mails requesting the recipe.

When and how do you find the time to do all of this? I really want to know!

Garcia: Like everything else, blogging requires discipline. I knew that if I blogged, I would try to do it daily. I get very disappointed –- should I say furious? –- when I visit a favorite blog and find the same posting there for three weeks.

C’mon, I say, the world is moving, three weeks is so FIVE years ago in today’s environment. And, yes, I know that nobody has something profound to say daily, but that is the beauty of blogs: they encourage spontaneity, the day’s musings, the little happening.

I have written books, and I know how tediously long and anti-climactic writing a book can be. The blog, alas, is there daily, to reveal what is at the tip of your tongue, the tip of your fingers, on the edge of your mind. You can always go back and review it, and edit it.

We all have something worth thinking about that happens every day. That is what blogging is about, revealing that. If it is a meditation that has to do with our industry, more power to it. Sometimes it is NOT related to the industry, but I find that people are still interested.

It takes me about 40 minutes a day to blog, give or take. It takes me 45 minutes to do my daily running training. I have added blogging to the routine. It is an intense workout, believe me, just like the running.

Are there blogs that you read each day?

Garcia: Yes, I read political blogs (some of the best content about the U.S. presidential elections are on blogs, not so much in the traditional media). I visit several Spanish-language blogs, plus Poynter, newsdesigner.com, and runners’ blogs, of course.

Remind me, when and where did you first teach in a journalism setting? And which was the first publication that you designed?

Garcia: First teaching in a journalism setting: Miami-Dade Community College, Miami, Florida, advising the student newspaper, Falcon Times, and teaching introductory Journalism courses (1970-76), it was 1976 that I left to go teach at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

The first newspaper I redesigned was the St. Cloud Daily Times (St. Cloud, Minn.) in 1979. Although I have to admit that my first taste of consulting had come with some early mock-ups of the then about to be born, el Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language daily of The Miami Herald, around 1975 or so.