
Sergio R. Bustos
Vice President for NewsHe joined WLRN as VP for News in January 2023 to lead the NPR affiliate's award-winning news team.
Bustos was a reporter for two decades at newspapers large and small, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, before becoming an editor at the Miami Herald in 2005, and since has served as editor of POLITICO Florida and deputy opinion editor for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Most recently, Bustos was Enterprise/Politics Editor for the USA Today Network-Florida’s 18 newsrooms.
Bustos also worked as regional manager with the local-journalism nonprofit Report for America will jumpstart efforts to secure resources for WLRN News’ ambitious plans. He was South regional manager for RFA, a non-profit that seeks to fill “news deserts” caused by the nationwide crisis in journalism.
Born in Santiago, Chile, and raised in Annandale, Va., Bustos began his journalism career at The Washington Post — delivering the newspaper as a teenager in suburban northern Virginia.
After graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University, Bustos went to work as a reporter for newspapers in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley — the News-Virginian in Waynesboro and Daily News-Leader in Staunton — before becoming a general assignment reporter at the Wilmington, Del., News-Journal.
He later joined The Philadelphia Inquirer as a reporter after his News-Journal editor recruited him to the big-city newspaper.
At The Inquirer, he won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 1992 for a series of stories that revealed how courts and police routinely violated rights of Spanish-speaking farmworkers in southeastern Pennsylvania.
He also was among the lead reporters who exposed a scandal involving thousands of fraudulent absentee ballots that prompted a federal judge to nullify the election of a Democratic state senator. The Inquirer was later named as a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for the stories.
He was one of 10 journalists nationwide to be awarded a John and Catherine MacArthur Foundation grant to study at the University of Southern California’s Center for International Journalists, where he traveled and wrote extensively about Mexico and Cuba in 1992-1993.
Bustos spent more than six years as a Washington correspondent for the former Gannett News Service. He covered the contentious national debate over immigration and border security following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, for Gannett’s southwestern newspapers, including The Arizona Republic.
He joined the Miami Herald as a first-time editor in 2005. He ran the teams covering police and courts, as well as Broward County, and he served as state and politics editor. He also was Sunday editor. In 2012, he supervised an award-winning investigation into a local congressman’s involvement in a campaign finance scandal, and oversaw coverage of several governor races and presidential elections. He co-authored a book, Miami's Criminal Past Uncovered, chronicling the city’s most notorious crimes, with Herald reporter Luisa Yanez in 2007.
Bustos returned to reporting in 2015 when he joined The Associated Press as a national political correspondent to cover the 2016 presidential campaign, assigned to cover candidates Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
He was later named editor of POLITICO Florida, where he edited a series of stories that led to the resignation of one of Florida’s most powerful state senators amid sexual harassment allegations from six women who were on the lawmaker’s staff or had lobbied him. He oversaw coverage of the Florida Legislature.
Before joining WLRN, he was Enterprise/Politics Editor for the USA Today Network-Florida’s 18 newsrooms. He coordinated coverage of the 2022 governor and U.S. Senate elections and worked with other newsrooms to cover Gov. Ron DeSantis’ controversial migrant relocation program and the devastating impact of Hurricane Ian.
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The Miami congresswoman, a vocal critic of President Joe Biden's policies toward Cuba, had received two donations totaling $750 last year from Manuel Rocha, the former U.S. ambassador in Latin America from Miami charged this week for being a covert agent for Cuba for decades.
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U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, R-Miami, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston and U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Parkland, are among a large number co-sponsors of H.R. 6578, "the Commission to Study Acts of Antisemitism in the United States Act."
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Only 30% of those Hispanic voters surveyed statewide said they would “definitely” or would “probably” vote next November for Biden compared to 36% for Trump. It was the lowest percentage of support for Biden among eight states surveyed by UnidosUS/Mi Familia Vota
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If passed, the Tigertail Historical Tree Island Repatriation Act would authorize the Army Corps of Engineers "to realign a portion of the levee located within the Tigertail Camp to give Miccosukee."
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A group of hourly-paid department managers this week joined assistant department managers in a federal lawsuit against Publix, alleging the regional supermarket chain failed to pay them overtime in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
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Movie and television producer Lee Caplin, who with his wife, has donated $10 million to the newly named Lee Caplin School of Journalism & Media at Florida International University, said he chose to contribute to FIU because of its diverse students and faculty, and to fund the training of the next generation of journalists at a time when local journalism is in crisis.
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Democratic U.S. Rep. Frederica S. Wilson, of Miami Gardens, and Democratic state Sen. Jason Pizzo, of Miami Lakes, will help collect signatures this weekend for a proposed constitutional amendment that would ensure abortion rights in Florida.
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Starbucks workers at more than 100 stores across the country are demanding the coffee company “respect their right to a union” to obtain better wages and working conditions.
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In a wide-ranging interview with The Florida Roundup, Jacksonville Congressman John Rutherford talked about avoiding a government shutdown, the chaotic House Speaker race, and his longtime efforts to ban oil and gas drilling off Florida’s coast. And why he supports Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
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At the Arsht Center, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and four presidential candidates squared off to prove to Republican voters who was more worthy of their party’s nomination. In Hialeah, former President Donald Trump rallied his legions of supporters and railed against his GOP rivals and President Biden.
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U.S. Rep. Wasserman Schultz is partnering with Freedom House and Amnesty International for the “immediate and unconditional release” of Latin Grammy-winning rapper Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez — who co-authored 'Patria y Vida' — and performance artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.
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Jewish and Muslim community leaders tell WLRN about the disturbing increase in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents in South Florida.