Luz Mely Reyes is a Venezuelan journalist, media entrepreneur, and editor specializing in migration, political, and investigative journalism. Her current lines of research focus on Venezuelan journalists in exile in the United States, coverage of the 2024 electoral process, the state of digital media in Venezuela, and Venezuelan migration. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism from the Central University of Venezuela and a master's degree in social communication from the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas.

Reyes' entrepreneurship and leadership led her to be co-founder and CEO of Efecto Cocuyo, a renowned digital native medium that promotes critical thinking and advocates for social justice, particularly for the Venezuelan community. Additionally, she co-founded Venezuela Migrante, a media project that emerged from Efecto Cocuyo. Reyes is an opinion columnist for The Washington Post en Español and for El País.

In her career as a journalist, she served as the first woman editor-in-chief of the Venezuelan media outlet Diario 2001. Besides journalism, Reyes has served as the author of eight books, including Futuro imperfecto: Hacia dónde va el periodismo, published in 2020. In her distinguished career, she has received more than a dozen awards, including the Gabriel García Márquez Foundation award in 2018, the German and French Human Rights Award in 2019, and the Lasa International Media Award in 2021.

Reyes' achievements allowed her, in 2024, to receive the Knight Fellow scholarship from the International Center for Journalists. In 2024, she was selected as a scholar for the Mellon Fellowship for High Impact Scholars, Artists, and Journalists, a project at the University of Texas that makes this digital repository possible.

As a fellow for the Mellon Foundation for High Impact Scholars at the University of Texas, Luz Mely Reyes completed an investigation called Te tienes que ir, an essay that features the stories of Venezuelan journalists who were forced to leave their home country and are now exiled in the United States.

Some colleagues interviewed for the project are César Miguel Rondón, Clavel Rangel y Heidy Ramírez Schmegner. During her stay at UT, Reyes also started a podcast and is working on a “stand-up” as her final delivery.

Scholar Resources

• Conference Presentation (PDF)
• Feature Article (PDF)
• Conference Transcript in Spanish (PDF)
• Conference Transcript in English (PDF)
• How to Cite (PDF)