Navarro Bello Directorship
Prior his death from cancer in 2006, Blancornelas, disheartened by the deaths of his co-founders and beginning to doubt Zeta's ability to foster change, considered closing the magazine with his death. Editor Adela Navarro Bello and his son César René Blanco Villalón persuaded him to let the magazine continue, however, and succeeded him as the magazine's co-publishers.
As the magazine's new director, Navarro continued Blancornelas' tradition of high-risk reporting on organized crime, stating that "Every time a journalist self-censors, the whole society loses". She oversaw an investigation of Hank Rhon, whose guards had murdered Félix Miranda, and following Hank's arrest in 2011 on illegal weapons charges, the magazine published the details and serial numbers of the 88 guns found in his home. The issue sold out, and the number of page views caused the magazine's website to crash. Though Hank was released for lack of evidence, Navarro continued to press for his arrest for involvement in the Félix murder. The magazine also began to publish increasing coverage of corruption allegations against the National Action Party as the party continued to gain power. The magazine was also criticized in 2009 and 2010, however, for being too sympathetic to the Mexican Army and failing to cover its alleged human rights abuses; Zeta named an army general its "person of the year" in each year.
In January 2010, US law enforcement notified Navarro of death threats from the Tijuana Cartel, causing the Mexican government to assign her seven soldiers as bodyguards. One month later, ten people were arrested for plotting a grenade attack against Zeta's offices. The Zeta offices are located in a residential neighborhood in Tijuana, but all of the printing is done in San Diego to avoid any reprisals from organized crime, with the printed magazines trucked in across the border. It has a printing circulation of 30,000, but waits up to three days to put its drug trafficking reports online to compel readers to buy the print version. In 2012, the Zeta is still thriving in Tijuana with its weekly column of "who's who in the underworld of Mexico's Baja California peninsula," and with unique stories of drug traffickers rarely seen any where else in the Mexican media. Most media outlets in Mexico limit their reports to government statements and news conferences, while others cover the drug war aggressively. Few of the national media outlets, however, have the intensity and in-depth coverage of the Zeta magazine.
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