How To Use Research Tools In CrashOut

And an Easter shout to subscribers

Para leer en español click aqui.

When news broke the Mexican military had killed El Mencho on Sunday Feb. 22 , I was in Tepoztlán, Morelos, after a restless night. As I rushed back to Mexico City, and later to Jalisco, to cover the story, my phone and mail box buzzed red hot with literally hundreds of requests for interviews and articles.

My priority, however, was to you readers at CrashOut, and to move reports fast on a kingpin killing that became the biggest story in the world. I did a handful of other pieces, including for The New Yorker and Aristegui Noticias, but I had to turn down or ignore the vast majority of invitations; I apologize to the many producers and editors that I didn’t answer but it’s impossible to get to it all.

All this shows the massive interest in the issue of cartel wars and narco trafficking and how you subscribers support a team, including myself and all the journos, photographers, filmmakers and others I can afford to bring in, doing important work.

While mainstream media outlets do cover the cartel conflict, I try and go much deeper. For example, CrashOut published 16 different pieces on the Mayo kidnapping and subsequent Sinaloa Cartel Civil War, which has caused thousands of deaths. This includes various exclusives, several on-the-ground reports, and a guerilla documentary.

With this level of coverage, CrashOut has acquired a trove in the archive on focused areas like cartel extortion or conflict in Michoacán, but also on situations further afield from Venezuela to El Salvador. And the articles all have additional links to government reports or news articles that back up specific quotes and data. A lot of readers here do serious research, whether for academia, journalism or government, so I want to give some pointers here on how to utilize this archive most effectively as a research tool.

Before that, a moment of tin rattling, and for any new readers, this post is a quarterly “shout to subscribers” that I do, which gets into Substack business. CrashOut has close to 14,000 people getting the newsletter but it’s the elite minority of paid subscribers who foot the bill. So if you are sitting on the edge, loving the content, and thinking that you might upgrade then now is that moment to make that cuppla clicks and BADDA BOOM, BADDA BING, you are a valued member of the CrashOut community.

Using CrashOut More Effectively For Research

The nature of Substack means you could be reading this in several formats, including in your email, on the Substack app, or on the website. For seeking specific data and quotes from older stories, I would suggest using the website version, which is at www.crashoutmedia.com.

You can search for stories in different ways, but I would recommend going to the archive tab, which you find on the main toolbar, as you see here.

If you leave the tab on “Latest,” you can simply go through the archive in date order, right back to the first story from February 2022, as it shows below.

However, you can also search on the archive tab, going to the magnifying glass icon on the right and using key words. These words will only hit on the titles and subtitles of the stories rather than from the full content but this will get a lot of the material as this search here shows.

The stories are in both English and Spanish. However, the source links are generally only in the English version (sorry and if I have the time or help in the future then I will do them on both). There are some links to other stories in CrashOut, which can help you find pieces that you didn’t locate in the original search.

Moreover, there are links to reports and sources of quotes. For example, below is a link to a K12 shooting database, from the recent story on a school shooting in Mexico.

Here, meanwhile, I show a link to the source of a quote from Michael Konnert, the CEO of Vizsla Silver Corp (it’s the original company statement).

I like to be vigilant with quotes and data because I think that is better journalism. But I also find these links useful myself when I want to check back and find things.

You can search for stories in other ways as well. One of these going through the pieces under the subheads of Reportage, News, History and Analysis in the main tab. A search icon on the main page also gives you a similar search to when you go into archive.

Other Narco News

On March 17, a federal grand jury indicted a gun shop owner in Arizona for providing material support to terrorist organizations, namely the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel. This is the first such case since President Trump ordered cartels to be named as foreign terrorist organizations last year. I had personally called for such action, as in this piece here, and I think it could have a powerful deterrent effect. This is not an attack on law abiding gun owners or the Second Amendment but an effort to specifically target those that knowingly sell weapons to cartels. Let’s see if it makes a difference.

Special thanks again to all of the supporters, sharers and commentators, and I’ve been much enjoying the chat, which I learn a lot from. You know who you are, but just to mention Bobby X, Paul Grill, Steven, Gregorio, Jim Creechan, Tom Johnston, Deana Holmes, Dindu Nuffin (great name), John C. Lamb, Daniel Helkenn, K Sheffield, Matt, Christopher O’Loughlin, BB Milward, Dave Wertz, Evan Maxwell, Wigan, Michael E. Perez, Lee HammMX, The Gang World＠YUU, Brian Allison, Stevie Abbott, Francisco Arcaute and many more.

I had a lot of great responses to the photo essay from Gustavo Graf on The Cholos of Neza. I like the format and would love to do more photo essays if I’m able; I’ve always been fascinated by subcultures and the cholo story is especially interesting.

On that note, here are a couple of Gustavo’s video gems from low riding meets. They are to the sound of hip hop but you can also imagine the 1975 classic by War in the background - you know the tune. Happy Easter All.

Copyright Ioan Grillo and CrashOut Media 2026