I've never lived in Santiago, only visited from time to time for days at a time, and not since the recent earthquake.
The only expat groups I've discovered so far have been on the allo expat and expat exchange networks and neither of them are as enjoyable IMO as this one.
You probably know this already but while North European types are about 1:10 of the people you see in the street in Buenos Aires, they are about 1:50 in Santiago and I think that this is why most of them seem to live and hang out in the Bellavista and Providencia districts though my personal preference is for the old city.
You probably also know that the new Chilean Congresso building is in Valparaiso and depending on the stories you want to cover, you may want to hack out there from time to time (about an hour each way from Santiago centre) or consider settling there for a while. I like Valpo - the chaotic Congresso end more than the tidy, organised port end - and I think I'd choose to live there and visit Santiago when I wanted to rather than the other way round.
