David Faitelson Leaves Grupo Reforma: When a Sports Writer Chooses the Path Between Two Stages

On the night of September 15, the eve of Mexico's Independence Day, David Faitelson posted a short announcement on social media. He is leaving his role as a columnist at Grupo Reforma. No dispute, no scandal, only words of thanks sent to the Junco family, to Roberto Zamarripa and Jorge Jiménez. The man who once guided generations of Mexican football readers through his columns has now compressed two decades of writing for the country's most influential newspaper into a single short sentence: he wants to devote time to his personal ventures.

Reading that news, I sat for a long while. Not out of surprise. Partings in the sports journalism industry always carry a particular smell - the smell of newsrooms emptying out, the smell of columns being pulled from the page, and the smell of cold coffee on the editor's desk when the editor-in-chief calls you into the room without stating the reason beforehand.

I do not analyze tactics with diagrams; I read a defensive line like a 4-4-2 poem. But there is one thing I have always learned to read exactly like a defensive line: the way a sports newsroom organizes its voice. Faitelson at Reforma was once a steel center-back. He blocked every debate heading the wrong way, and when needed, cleared the ball forward with a single comment sharp enough to open a whole week of argument. Losing him, the Cancha section does not merely lose a writer. They lose a coordinate.

But I do not want to write about loss. I want to write about movement.

Two banks of one voice

When a sports journalist like Faitelson leaves print to pour all his energy into television, that is not just a contract matter. It is an ecosystem matter. In Mexico, Liga MX lacks an independent print tradition as strong as European football's. Figures like Faitelson, with footing both on paper and on air, carry more collective-memory weight than most of their European colleagues. They do not merely report. They shape how millions remember a season, a goal, a defeat.

In March of this year, I was in Mexico City on a two-week reporting trip and happened to be invited to a TUDN taping. The full camera rig, fourteen angles, three scriptwriters sitting behind the wings. When Faitelson walked into the studio, the room changed tempo. Not because he was loud. But because everyone, from technicians to editors, spoke a little more softly. Authority in the sports industry does not come from the microphone. It comes from how many people are waiting for you to open your mouth to decide what they should think about Mexico's national team today.

An empty stadium is not silence, but a million voices compressed into every seat. That image returned to my mind when I thought about writers leaving newsrooms. Every vacated column is not just a blank space on a page. It is a silence in the collective memory of millions of readers, those who once waited for Faitelson's Monday piece to know whom they should be angry at after the weekend's round.

At TUDN, Faitelson already has at least three programs bearing his name: 'Faitelson sin censura', 'Tercer Grado Deportivo' and high-profile analysis segments. This is not an ordinary editor changing jobs. This is a personal brand shifting from a slow-reading model to a multi-platform distribution model. For Grupo Reforma, losing Faitelson means losing part of the digital traffic his column generated - though the specific scale of the drop has not been disclosed.

The price of concentrating voices

There is something I consider paradoxical in this story, and it is often overlooked when journalism writes about journalism.

People usually describe a commentator moving to a major television channel as 'increasing influence'. But looked at closely, it may be the reverse process. When Faitelson was still at Reforma, he had two platforms: an independent print newsroom and a television network owned by Televisa. When he leaves Reforma, he has only one. His voice, in terms of the number of channels broadcasting it, may be larger. But in terms of the number of channels controlling the content, it is narrower.

That is worth thinking about. In Mexico, independent journalism has always been fragile ground. TUDN belongs to one of the largest media conglomerates in Latin America. An editor can say anything he wants on that conglomerate's television air - until he says something the conglomerate's advertisers do not want to hear. Print has different limits, but they tend to be less bound to the direct per-program advertising revenue that television still operates on.

I remember the time my piece was struck in 2026 because I am a woman. The editor's stated reason was that women do not understand tactics. The day I was rejected for being female, I understood that the ball never reads documents. But I also understood something else: not every platform grants the same freedom. Some platforms grant you the freedom to speak but limit your reach. Some grant you reach but dictate what you must say. Faitelson, at this stage of his career, is choosing the second bank. I do not judge. I only record.

The risk of the giant

The greatest danger in this media transfer does not lie with Faitelson. It lies with TUDN.

A sports television network is only as strong as its biggest voices. When you already have Faitelson, André Marín and a handful of other veteran writers, you own almost the entire spectrum of Mexican football debate. But each of those faces is also a point of risk: their careers are bound to their personalities, and their personalities are bound to their capacity to provoke. When provocation crosses the threshold advertisers accept, the price is not just an editor apologizing. The price is a share of the network's revenue and the reputation of the parent conglomerate.

I have watched many similar deals in this industry. In Europe, when Gary Lineker left the BBC to focus on personal ventures, nobody said his voice narrowed. But nobody said it widened either. The truth is that every time a writer leaves an independent platform to focus on a larger one, what is lost is not the voice. What is lost is the dilemma. The ability to ask hard questions right in the newsroom that raised you - instead of only asking questions on the air of the person who pays you.

There is also a variable few mention. Faitelson uses the phrase 'personal ventures'. This is a phrase as yet undefined. In modern media economics, it often conceals one of three things: a private podcast, a YouTube channel, or an independent newsletter platform like Substack. If that is what he is preparing, then TUDN is not merely a new employer. It is a pedestal. And when you stand on a pedestal, you can climb further. But you can also be knocked down.

The question left on the stands

I do not know whether Faitelson will recall some day at Reforma. But I know one thing for certain: Mexican sports journalism will remember. Those who read him weekly will feel a tiny gap in their habits - like the empty stands after the pandemic, where no matter how good the match, you could hear your own heartbeat more clearly than the cheering.

Faitelson's move is a small incision in Mexico's sports media system. But it raises a large question: when most of the biggest voices of a football culture flow toward a single conglomerate, are we expanding freedom of expression or narrowing it in the form of a long-term contract?

A contract is not signed in ink, but in the memory of an entire stadium. Faitelson is signing such a contract with TUDN. Will Mexican audiences sign back with him, or will they wait for another writer to appear at Cancha and grow used to their Monday habit? The answer is not yet here.

And sometimes, like everything else in football, the answer will come on the pitch, on some Saturday night, when a controversial decision is made, and everyone turns to see where Faitelson is, what he is saying, and within what framework he is obliged to say it.