Monica Castillo starts a new job today as film writer for Watching, the New York Times’ new film and television site and streaming newsletter.

She’ll be recommending movies to stream from platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Netflix.

“I’ve enjoyed watching the growth of streaming platforms as a way to make movies more accessible to viewers around the country and internationally,” she tells Media Moves. “Now it’s figuring out what to watch from all these possibilities, and I’m excited to be a part of a team dedicated to answering that question.”

TV editor Gilbert Cruz oversees the NYT’s “what-to-watch guide.”

Monica recently finished a Specialized Journalism Master’s at USC Annenberg. She previously worked as an entertainment reporter at International Business Times.

Her work has been published in several media outlets, including the Village Voice, LA Weekly, NPR, The Boston Globe, Cosmopolitan, RogerEbert.com, Remezcla, and Paste Magazine.

After an 8-year run at the New York Times, Tanzina Vega is leaving the paper to join CNN Politics as a digital correspondent. She’ll continue to be based in New York.

She starts the new job on April 20.

In her new role, Tanzina will be covering the intersection of technology, politics and civil rights leading up to the 2016 presidential elections.

In a memo sent to staff, CNN Politics Executive Editor Rachel Smolkin described Tanzina’s role:

“She’ll look at innovative ways the 2016 campaigns are using technology, the evolution of micro targeting and new twists in voter registration. She’ll also mine the blending of technology and politics beyond the beltway, from grassroots movements to civil rights to hashtag activism on social media.”

Tanzina tweeted about the new job and thanked her colleagues at the NYT.

Working at @nytimes has been an honor. I am grateful to the editors, producers and fellow reporters who have supported me along the way.

— Tanzina Vega (@tanzinavega) March 27, 2015

During her tenure at the NYT, Tanzina was a web producer, media reporter and national correspondent covering race issues. The paper moved her from that beat in January of this year to cover the Bronx court system as a metro reporter.

Héctor Tobar, who left the Los Angeles Times in September of 2014 to take a job as a professor at the University of Oregon, is now a contributing Op-Ed writer for the New York Times.

Héctor is one of 19 contributing opinion writers the NYT has hired to beef up its roster.

His first column at the NYT was published this week.

The Los Angeles-born author and journalist spent two decades at the LAT, as a correspondent, columnist and book critic.

His books include the novels “The Tattooed Soldier” and “The Barbarian Nurseries” and the nonfiction “Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle that Set Them Free.”

Gilbert Cruz starts a new job today as the New York Times’ Television Editor. He joins the paper from New York Magazine, where he was Editorial Director of online entertainment site Vulture.

He joined New York Mag as Senior Editor of Vulture.com in 2012 and was promoted to Deputy Editor in 2013, before taking on the Editorial Director role.

He previously worked for Time magazine, starting out as a staff writer before getting promoted to Senior Editor in 2010. During his time there, he launched and edited Time.com’s entertainment vertical and developed Populist, an ASME-winning iPad app.

Before joining Time, Cruz worked 3 years as an editorial assistant for Entertainment Weekly.

This investigative project ran in Spanish online, with a “Read in English” link underneath the photo of a Mexican informant.

The New York Times on Monday published an investigative project in both English and Spanish.

“A Drug War Informer in No Man’s Land,” about a former Mexican police chief turned DEA informant abandoned by the U.S. government after he provided information that linked Mexico’s military to drug cartels, ran in yesterday’s print and online editions.

“Un Informante de la Guerra Contra el Narcotráfico en Tierra de Nadie,” only ran online, but it marks a first for the NYT.

Investigations editor Christine Kay came up with the idea. “I was surprised the paper had never run a story in Spanish prior to this,” she says.

“Ginger Thompson’s stories on Latin America often are translated and run on the front pages of papers there. So we thought, why not provide a Spanish-language version of her story and drive readers to our own site instead. We are interested to see how much traffic the Spanish version gets.

She points out that “the story was only published in Spanish on the web, where the vast majority of our readers outside the United States access the paper,” but that the NYT hoped “Spanish-speaking residents in this country would benefit by the translation.”

Correction 5/2/13: When this story was published on Tuesday, it stated that it was “the first time in its history” that the NYT published a story in Spanish.  That was the investigation editor’s belief.

In the English version that ran online, a “Leer en Español” link allows readers to view the Spanish version of the investigative story.

Today, a corporate spokesperson for the NYT wrote to say that “A Drug War Informer in No Man’s Land,” was “not the first time The Times has published a story in the Spanish language.”

In an email statement,  Stephanie Yera wrote:  “The New York Times has published stories in Spanish on NYTimes.com for some time, either in conjunction with special projects or because it has simply made sense editorially.  Stories are published in the Spanish language via The New York Times News Service & Syndicate or translated into Spanish, and translators are credited at the end of our articles.”

She also writes that they’ve also included stories in Portuguese and Chinese and cited the following 3 stories published in Spanish on NYTimes.com:

A story by Ginger Thompson, with Randal Archibold and Eric Schmitt (translators are named at the bottom of the article), on U.S. involvement in hindering the rise of Mexican General Moisés García Ochoa, from Feb. 2013:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/world/americas/mano-de-estados-unidos-frena-promocion-de-general-en-mexico.html?pagewanted=all

A July 2012 story on marijuana trafficking in Uruguay by Damien Cave:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/world/americas/para-frenar-a-traficantes-de-marihuana-uruguay-considera-aduearse-de-su-negocio.html

A 2011 series on immigration by Damien Cave: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/world/americas/immigration-en-espanol.html.

After 19 years working for the Miami Herald, Frances “Frenchie” Robles is leaving the paper on Dec. 14.  After a one-month break, she’ll join the New York Times as a national and foreign correspondent, covering Florida and the Caribbean.

She starts the new gig Jan. 14 in NYC, where she’ll spend a few months before heading back to her home base of Miami.

“That assignment is probably only going to be about a year; they really want me to work in New York,” says Frenchie. “This job takes me full circle. I was a night copy girl at the Times while studying at NYU.”

Frenchie has spent the last 19 years at the Herald, where she has held multiple roles.  She was an education, police and courts reporter before heading the Managua and Bogotá bureaus for the paper.  She was also the Cuba reporter for 6 years and most recently, an enterprise writer.

Prior to the Herald, she was a staff writer at the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

About her decision to leave the Herald, she says:

“When the recession hit and newspapers like The Herald started laying off reporters in droves, everybody kept asking: ‘What’s your plan B?’ I love and am committed to journalism, so my Plan B was for Herald executives to call the SWAT team to drag me out of newsroom. It’s so exciting to be offered a dream job at such a prestigious paper and be able to remain in the news-gathering business — without having to involve the police.”

Google yesterday introduced Google+ pages for brands and businesses and already several news organizations have launched their own pages.

Among the first to adapt to the new social media engagement tool:  NBC News, Good Morning America, Fox News and The New York Times.

Businesses will be able to create a professional presence, but Google won’t allow brand page owners to host contests or promotions directly on the on the social network itself, according to TechCrunch.

The official Google blog has more details about how it works and even has a list of some just launched pages.

New York Times metro reporter David Gonzalez has been named co-editor of Lens, the paper’s photography blog.

About the new duties, David tells me: “In a way, my taking on a new role at Lens combines both of my journalistic passions. Before I became a pencil-person, I was a photographer, working at En Foco, a Latino photographer’s group in the South Bronx. In more recent years, I have been doing more photography again; from shooting my own stories when I was Central America Bureau Chief, as well as for the City Room blog. A photo spread I did on images of the South Bronx in 1979 – “Faces in the Rubble” – sparked tremendous reader interest when it was the cover of the Metropolitan section in August, 2009. So, it’s only natural I figured out a way to return to roots.”

At Lens David will be working with his co-editor, Jim Estrin “to publish the best and most interesting of visual journalism from around the world.”

Although he’ll be doing some editing, David says he’ll be mostly writing. “I also hope to be able to showcase up-and-coming photogs from Latin America and other regions that US readers may not be familiar with.”

David isn’t straying from the NYT’s Metro section. He has started a biweekly feature on City Room called “Side Street,” which combines images he takes of the city with an essay exploring the social, cultural and economic changes in the NYC’s neighborhoods.

Since his arrival at the NYT  in 1990, David has been the Bronx Bureau Chief, a columnist, and the Central America/Caribbean Bureau Chief.  He previously worked for Newsweek magazine. Before starting his journalism career, the Yale and Columbia U grad worked for several non-profits serving New York City’s Latino and African-American communities. He was also the project coordinator at En Foco, an arts group that supports up-and-coming Latino photographers.