International Business : In the Heart of Mexico, He Plans to Clean Up : Media: Newspaper owner Alejandro Junco intends to take on the powerful and the corrupt.

Facing death threats for El Norte’s criticism of the Mexican government, the newspaper’s owner, Alejandro Junco, fled Monterrey for the safety of a Laredo, Tex., ranch 12 years ago.

The U.S. media quickly protested the mistreatment of a colleague, and President Jose Lopez Portillo intervened. Junco returned just a week later.

“They almost drove him out of business,” said Robert Jeffrey, former journalism dean at Junco’s alma mater, the University of Texas. “He was under a great deal of pressure, but he’s very persistent.”

Junco is going to need that persistence for his latest project: a Mexico City newspaper designed to clean up Mexico’s tainted journalism. Some say the new capital city paper could even reshape the country’s politics.

After the first edition’s splashy appearance on the anniversary of the Mexican Revolution in November, the new paper, Reforma, ran stories that criticized the sale of television stations to media giant Grupo Televisa and alleged vote rigging in Yucatan elections. And columnists from the left and right offered political balance.

“It has caught on like wildfire,” said Pat Nelson, editor of the English-language Mexico City News and a former El Norte columnist. “The other papers are very worried.”

Junco invested $50 million of El Norte’s money to launch Reforma, Corazon de Mexico, and he’s betting on a system of home delivery to capture a growing middle-class audience. He’s forecasting 300,000 circulation from a current 30,000 and has vowed to keep Reforma diligently independent.

In a country where more than 30 journalists have been killed in the past decade, Junco’s strength is his willingness to take on the powerful, staffers say.

“He doesn’t have any veneration for politicians,” said a Reforma reporter.

Junco insists he has no political ax to grind, but the arrival of the paper was trumpeted on shoeshine stands with a green banner that read “Reforma--For a Cleaner City.” In the capital, where many say corruption is as pervasive as air pollution, that message wasn’t subtle.

“We couldn’t care less about politics,” Junco, 45, said during an interview in his corner office of the Reforma newsroom. “We are just out to be a good mirror of the community.”

In Mexico, that could be controversial enough. It’s also sweet revenge for a man the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party has consistently tried to muzzle.

When he became publisher of El Norte in 1973, few would have predicted the 24-year-old Junco could make that newspaper, founded by his grandfather, Monterrey’s most prominent, with 147,000 readers. Especially because that same year El Norte had dwindled to 12 pages after a state-owned company cut off its newsprint supply in retaliation for criticism of President Luis Echeverria.

“When he was at UT, he was an average student,” said Richard Pennington, who is preparing biographies of famous foreign UT graduates. “He showed no promise of greatness.”

But Junco’s stay at UT left a deep impression. Two weeks after returning to Monterrey, he started a journalism school at El Norte aiming to stamp out corruption among his peers.

Many Mexican journalists supplement their small incomes by taking bribes in exchange for flattering stories. To avert big-city corruption at Reforma, Junco hired 100 local university students with no journalism experience from 2,700 applicants and taught them the rules of aggressive, hard-hitting journalism, El Norte style.

El Norte succeeds, in part, because its pro-business stance reflects the people of Monterrey’s frustrations with Mexico City bureaucrats. Junco says Reforma will copy some features of El Norte, including a board of readers to provide feedback on the paper’s coverage.

Reforma will also copy El Norte’s political opinion polls, unique for a Mexican paper, he said.

Local reporters were hired to give Reforma a Mexico-City flavor, but all of its executives are from Monterrey and the paper reflects the character of northern Mexico, which tends to be more direct, businesslike and Americanized.

That influence extends beyond business practices. Junco jogs and rides a mountain bike near his home in the exclusive Desierto de los Leones section of Mexico City. In a country where smoking is widespread, “Gracias Por No Fumar” signs dot the paper’s office. Alcohol isn’t served at the annual Christmas party.

While many executives in Mexico ensconce themselves in penthouse suites, Junco seems to relish democratic touches, strolling around the newsroom and dropping in on editorial meetings.

Still, there’s no doubt who’s in charge. Junco began a contest among employees to name the new newspaper, but disregarded the top two entries. Instead, he glanced at a street sign on the main boulevard, Paseo de la Reforma, and made a spontaneous decision alone.

Not everything has gone according to plan, though. A Dow Jones & Co. investment of 49% in Reforma fell through.

Technology may be Junco’s biggest innovation, especially in a country where labor is so cheap. Reforma is Mexico’s only fully computerized newspaper.

Junco plans to use technology to create a profile of each reader, tailoring editorial content to different areas of the city and, eventually, individual readers.

“I hope to turn a profit in a couple of years,” said Junco, adding that he would sell shares in the company to raise capital for other ventures, such as a Latin American electronic publishing project.