WRITING

THEWRAP
A Development Executive Wrestles With How TV’s New Normal Is Crushing Jobs

BILLBOARD
The Label That Launched Bad Bunny Was Founded by Investor Tied to Hugo Chavez Regime  Now A High-Stakes Deal Could Change Company’s Ownership

BILLBOARD
Superstar DJ Alok Leaned on Unpaid Ghost Producers to Create His Brazilian Bass Hits

THEWRAP
Death in the Desert: When Hamas Came to an Israeli Rave, Friends Perished

THE NEW YORK TIMES
In Tangle of Young Lips, a Sex Rebellion in Chile

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Rising Tower Emerges As a Billionaires’ Haven

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Tribes of Amazon Find an Ally Out of ‘Avatar’

THE NEW YORK TIMES
A Year Out of the Dark in Chile, but Still Trapped

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
For Aging Castro, Chavez Emerges as a Vital Crutch

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
How Oil Giant’s Technicians Turned into Revolutionaries

A LIFE WRITING

Alexei Barrionuevo, President of Guantina, has more than three decades of professional writing experience. As a news reporter, he has composed thousands of breaking news articles and news analyses on tight deadlines, while also weaving together long-form tales based on weeks of research and reporting.

He has written corporate bios for CEOs, press releases and research papers for companies and the occasional speech. He also has authored travel articles, covered sports events, and scripted videos for The New York Times and a full-length feature independent documentary film, “Waiting For The Drop.”

His work has appeared in the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Dallas Morning News, as well as Billboard, TheWrap, The Real Deal, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor and the Miami Herald.

His 2023 story, “Death in The Desert: When Hamas Came to an Israeli Rave, Friends Perished,” won 1st Place at the Los Angeles Press Club’s National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards.

A Development Executive Wrestles With How TV’s New Normal Is Crushing Jobs

Erin Copen Howard stood silently and watched as her five-year-old son Odin scrolled intently through YouTube Shorts videos on the living room TV, while his seven-year-old sister Aurora traveled through the “My Movie” Roblox-verse on her tablet.’

Minutes later, Odin slapped on a VR headset and journeyed into “Penguin Paradise,” his arms flailing about as he shouted to other contestants inside the game.

“This is the death of television,” Copen Howard, 44, told TheWrap. “That’s all they watch, YouTube Shorts. And it breaks my heart.”

For most of the past two decades, she has spent her time developing reality television shows. These days, she watches the painful transformation of the TV industry playing out in real time in her Santa Monica apartment. For Copen Howard, the tumultuous shift in television viewing habits — especially among younger consumers — is top of mind as she contemplates her family’s financial survival. In November, she was laid off from a job as a senior vice president of development for a Canadian production company. She hasn’t been able to find work in the industry since.

The Label That Launched Bad Bunny Was Founded by Investor Tied to Hugo Chavez Regime. Now A High-Stakes Deal Could ChangeCompany’s Ownership

For Rimas Entertainment CEO Noah Assad, it was a night to celebrate. On Feb. 1, seven years after signing Bad Bunny, Assad, 32, took the stage to accept the Executive of the Year award at the annual Grammy-week Billboard Power 100 event to honor the most important executives in the business. In front of an audience that included Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge, HYBE Chairman Bang Si-hyuk and music mogul Clive Davis, Assad, sporting white sneakers and a ponytail, accepted the award from fellow Puerto Rican Bad Bunny. Minutes later, manager and executive Scooter Braun told Assad from the stage: “You’re the best of us now.”

Bad Bunny’s fifth studio album, Un Verano Sin Ti, ended the year at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — the first non-English album to do so — and his 81 concerts in 2022 grossed a record $434.9 million. Assad was the force behind a lot of this success, as the artist himself noted onstage. “There is no Bad Bunny superstar without Noah,” he said in halting English, then handed Assad the obelisk-shaped plaque. “Without [Bad Bunny],” Assad said as he accepted the award, “a lot of my dreams would have never become true.”

Superstar DJ Alok Leaned on Unpaid Ghost Producers to Create His Brazilian Bass Hits

RIO DE JANEIRO – Behind a walled compound off a dirt road ringed by palm trees and a lush green mountain, producer-DJs Sean and Kevin Brauer learned how to make music while living in the cult-like Children of God religious community for the first two decades of their lives.

The goal then wasn’t dance-music stardom – it was to produce Christian rock and folk music to support the religious movement. The Brauer brothers were home schooled, had no access to the internet and had limited interaction with “systemites” – Brazilians living outside the compound’s stone walls. But inside, they had a music studio and lived among musicians like guitarist Jeremy Spencer, who’d been one of the founding members of Fleetwood Mac.

Death in the Desert: When Hamas Came to an Israeli Rave, Friends Perished

As night gave way to daybreak at the Supernova Sukkot Gathering in southern Israel, Ofek Baribi turned to Eden Abdulayev and gave her a soft kiss on the lips, and the pair headed to the dance floor. Amid the fairy lights, giant Buddha statue and the waving of stuffed monkeys on sticks, they danced to the pounding psy trance rhythms. “’I’m on the top of my life right now,’” Baribi, 24, recalled Abdulayev telling him.

It would be their last sunrise together.

A half hour later, at 6:30 a.m., the music at the rave suddenly cut off. They heard the unmistakable sounds of rockets flying overhead, coming from the direction of Gaza, only three miles away. A voice on the loudspeaker told the crowd of 3,000 revelers to head to their cars. The party, which was expected to last until 4 p.m., was over — but the nightmare in the desert was only beginning.

For nearly eight hours, Baribi and a handful of family members ran across the open sand, hid in some bushes, and took refuge in cow manure at a nearby farm in a desperate effort to stay alive, as heavily armed members of the terrorist group Hamas hunted down and ultimately killed more than 260 of the festival attendees, according to rescue service ZAKA, kidnapping at least a dozen more. Among those killed was Osher Vaknin, who helped organize the rave with his twin brother Michael, who is still missing.

In Tangle of Young Lips, a Sex Rebellion in Chile

SANTIAGO, Chile — It is just after 5 p.m. in what was once one of Latin America’s most sexually conservative countries, and the youth of Chile are bumping and grinding to a reggaetón beat. At the Bar Urbano disco, boys and girls ages 14 to 18 are stripping off their shirts, revealing bras, tattoos and nipple rings.

The place is a tangle of lips and tongues and hands, all groping and exploring. About 800 teenagers sway and bounce to lyrics imploring them to “Poncea! Poncea!”: make out with as many people as they can.

And make out they do — with stranger after stranger, vying for the honor of being known as the “ponceo,” the one who pairs up the most. Chile, long considered to have among the most traditional social mores in South America, is crashing headlong into that reputation with its precocious teenagers. Chile’s youths are living in a period of sexual exploration that, academics and government officials say, is like nothing the country has witnessed before.“

Rising Tower Emerges as a Billionaires’ Haven

One57, a 1,004-foot tower under construction in Midtown Manhattan, will soon hold the title of New York’s tallest building with residences. But without fanfare from its ultra-private future residents, it is cementing a new title: the global billionaires’ club.

The buyers of the nine full-floor apartments near the top that have sold so far — among them two duplexes under contract for more than $90 million each — are all billionaires, Gary Barnett, the president of the Extell Development Company, the building’s developer, said this week. The other seven apartments ranged in price from $45 million to $50 million.

The billionaires’ club includes several Americans, at least two buyers from China, a Canadian, a Nigerian and a Briton, according to Mr. Barnett and brokers who have sold apartments in the building, at 157 West 57th Street. Mr. Barnett said that at least a few buyers were “significant Forbes billionaires.”

Tribes of Amazon Find an Ally Out of ‘Avatar’

VOLTA GRANDE DO XINGU, Brazil — They came from the far reaches of the Amazon, traveling in small boats and canoes for up to three days to discuss their fate. James Cameron, the Hollywood titan, stood before them with orange warrior streaks painted on his face, comparing the threats on their lands to a snake eating its prey.

“The snake kills by squeezing very slowly,” Mr. Cameron said to more than 70 indigenous people, some holding spears and bows and arrows, under a tree here along the Xingu River. “This is how the civilized world slowly, slowly pushes into the forest and takes away the world that used to be,” he added.

As if to underscore the point, seconds later a poisonous green snake fell out of a tree, just feet from where Mr. Cameron’s wife sat on a log. Screams rang out. Villagers scattered. The snake was killed. Then indigenous leaders set off on a dance of appreciation, ending at the boat that took Mr. Cameron away. All the while, Mr. Cameron danced haltingly, shaking a spear, a chief’s feathery yellow and white headdress atop his head.

A Year Out of the Dark in Chile, but Still Trapped

COPIAPÓ, Chile — After his dramatic rescue from a mine last year, Jimmy Sánchez traveled the world, cruising the Greek islands, visiting Britain, Israel, Los Angeles, Disney World — all paid for by people who were moved by the Chilean miners’ story of courage and perseverance.

But today Mr. Sánchez, like many of the 33 miners who survived 69 days nearly a half-mile underground, is jobless and at wits’ end. Twice a month, he boards a bus to Santiago, Chile’s capital, traveling 11 hours each way for a short visit with a psychiatrist. He is one of nine miners receiving sick-leave pay for prolonged post-traumatic stress; a handful of others say they are seeing private therapists.

“Most of us are in the same place with emotional and psychological problems,” said Mr. Sánchez, 20. “It was the fear that we would never again see our families, that we were going to die. We just can’t shake those memories.”

One year after their globally televised rescue, after the worldwide spotlight faded and the trips and offers have dwindled, the miners say that most of them are unemployed and that many are poorer than before.

Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril

VISALIA, Calif., Feb. 23 — David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.

In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.”

The sudden mysterious losses are highlighting the critical link that honeybees play in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables across the country. Beekeepers have fought regional bee crises before, but this is the first national affliction.

For Aging Castro, Chavez Emerges as a Vital Crutch

Amid a new round of rumors that his health is failing, Fidel Castro has found a key benefactor and heir apparent to the cause of derailing the U.S.’s agenda in Latin America: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

With little fanfare, Venezuela’s left-leaning government has become the biggest financial supporter of Cuba since the Soviet Union pulled the plug on Mr. Castro more than a decade ago.

Over the past three years, Cuba has run up a massive debt of $752 million for oil shipped by Venezuela’s state oil company, according to people close to the company and internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

How Oil Giant’s Technicians Turned Into Revolutionaries

VALENCIA, Venezuela — For 30 years, Rogelio Lozada was the sort of dedicated engineer who made Petroleos de Venezuela SA one of the best-run companies in Latin America.

But in recent weeks, Mr. Lozada, the manager of the oil company’s El Palito refinery near here, has taken on a new mission: ousting President Hugo Chavez.