By Yenibel Ruiz
La Nueva Provincia, one of the oldest and most traditional newspapers of Argentina that was recently renamed La Nueva, announced it will limit the circulation of its print edition to three days per week.
In a statement released on June 23, the newspaper of Bahía Blanca, Province of Buenos Aires, explained that starting on July 9 of this year, there will be no more print editions of the publication from Tuesday to Friday as part of the migration process to its digital platform lanueva.com.
On the same day, it issued a statement on the reduction of the print edition, La Nueva sent messages of dismissal to 22 employees, some journalists among them, reported the Forum of Argentine Journalism (FOPEA for its initials in Spanish).
One of the oldest newspapers in Argentina, the daily, which was founded in 1898, said in the statement that it joins the global trend of print newspapers migrating to digital platforms considering the decline in sales of print editions.
“La Nueva is not an exception in this global wave of change in communication. The same reasons for these changes are what’s driving the need to limit publication of our print editions to Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays, days which see the greatest interest from the public and advertisers, the sole legitimate supporters of independent journalism,” the statement said.
Additionally, the newspaper published figures that explain how their digital platforms have been growing since 2014, in its best moments reaching audiences of “almost 300 thousand visitors a day and about 10,000,000 page views per month.” It added that in the same time period, the paper editions have been declining in sales and have required a capital injection of four million US dollars.
In a study on global trends reported in its recent congress in Cartagena, Colombia, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) said that the digital subscriptions of newspapers have increased by 30 percent in 2015 and more than 500 percent in the last five years. However, it said that these still represent a very low percentage of the total newspaper revenues.
La Nueva follows a trend of newspapers in other countries that have also reduced the number of days in the week in which their print editions circulate. In Brazil, for example, the newspaper Zero Hora stopped circulating on Sundays. La Nueva will maintain its print edition on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. According to the statement, the paper, with favorite sections of their readers, will be “more present that ever in daily life, in formats for web, tablet and cell phones, with everything that happens in the city, the country and the world, instantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year; with more services and levels of participation.”
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
