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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Investigators said the remains of 89-year-old Robert Markel were found about 100 yards from his home in rural Jerome. They found evidence that “a physical encounter” occurred between a bear and Markel; that the man’s dog was killed nearby and that the killer bear “entered” the victim's home. -
Two groups, Keep Them Honest and a group of "Cubans with I-220A," have launched billboard ad campaigns in South Florida, targeting Republican Cuban American politicians Maria Elvira Salazar, Mario Diaz-Balart, and Carlos Gimenez -
South Florida U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and María Elvira Salazar, along with Darren Soto, D-Orlando, said Thursday they introduced the Venezuela TPS Act of 2025 to extend Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants already in the U.S. -
Speaking Sunday with Jackie Nespral, host of NBC6 Impact, González said he would want to see an “across the board” assessment of city expenses. He ticked off a list of departments and programs, from the “commissioner’s office, CRA’s (Community Redevelopment Agencies), the Bayfront Trust — you name it.” -
Cuban exile groups in Miami on Saturday demonstrated against the Cuban government’s arrests this week of two prominent dissidents, Félix Navarro and José Daniel Ferrer. -
In a statement released late Friday night, as the 60-day legislative session came to an end, the Florida Education Association said the Legislature and governor’s actions have led to a decline in SAT scores and reading and math scores and a teacher and staff shortage. -
“Once again, we’ve done what many thought was impossible: not one anti-LGBTQ bill passed this [60-day] session,” said Equality Florida Executive Director Nadine Smith in a statement on Saturday. -
U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami Gardens, and U.S. Rep Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Miramar, denounced the Trump administration for allowing what they said were “inhumane” conditions at a facility in Pompano Beach that houses suspected undocumented immigrants. A 44-year-old Haitian woman died last week while in federal custody. -
The Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office and the FBI said they prevented a mass shooting planned by a Loxahatchee man, who possessed 18 firearms, 12,000 rounds of ammunition, two-way radios and law enforcement officer uniforms. -
“Ms. [Marie Ange] Blaise's life mattered, and we owe it to her and to the public to understand how such a loss occurred while she was in the care and custody of the U.S. government,” wrote U.S. Rep Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick. -
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed on Tuesday that Marie Ange Blaise, a 44-year-old Haitian woman, died in federal custody at the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach. -
Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz says the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), along with congressional Republicans, must cease their “illegal assault” on the nation’s Social Security program.
