Monterrey

After seventy years of an almost complete hegemony, in 2000 the Institutional Revolutionary Party lost the presidency of the Republic to the oppositional National Action Party candidate, Vicente Fox Quesada. That moment was considered the hallmark of the political transition that started in certain regions two decades ago. According to a group of American scholars, the transformation of the political system involved the modernisation of the media system as well, as the Mexican press as a whole was moving towards its professionalization. Nonetheless, diverse case studies focused on specific regions have found empirical evidence that prove otherwise. That is, the findings consistently prove that local and regional journalism is still determined by the customs of the authoritarian model. Based upon a content analysis of the coverage of the 2015 congressional elections in both national and state newspapers, the main argument of this article is that Mexican journalism oscillates between modernisation and stagnation.