By Alejandro Martínez
Award-winning blogger and activist Yoani Sánchez has announced the name and launch date for the new digital publication that she announced earlier this year.
The news site will be called 14ymedio.com ("14 and a half" in Spanish) and will launch in the island next week on May 21, Sánchez wrote in her personal blog Generación Y. The name makes reference to the 14th floor where the new website's headquarters will be located, as well as the year when the publication is being founded. It also keeps the letter "Y" of the blog that turned Sánchez into an internationally recognized figure.
According to The Miami Herald, the site will have a staff of 12 persons, including Sánchez's husband, journalist Reinaldo Escobar. It will run traditional sections like sports, opinion, fashion and business.
In a country where internet access remains extremely limited, it is unclear how many people in the island will be able to follow the new site. However, Sánchez promised to create "a media outlet that we hope will help in the necessary transition that will occur in our country" and "a space to tell stories about Cuba from within Cuba."
14ymedio.com will represent a challenge to the Cuban government's strict control over media in the island. The site's team has already faced its first difficulties, Sánchez said.
"It will be a difficult journey," Sánchez wrote. "During the last few weeks we have gotten a preview of how the official propaganda will try to demonize us for putting together this publication. Already, in fact, several persons in our work team have received the first warning calls from the country's security office."
Cuba is frequently the lowest-ranked country in freedom of the press in the American continent. The Cuban government controls every print, radio and TV media outlet on the island. Criticizing the government publicly can be punished with prison.
Sánchez has become one of the most prominent critical voices in Cuba. She launched her blog Generación Y in 2007 and now has more than 600,000 followers in Twitter. She won Spain's prestigious Ortega y Gasset journalism award in 2008, same year in which she was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential persons in the world.
Currently she acts as the regional vice president for the Inter American Press Association's Freedom of the Press and Information Commission. Recently she was named as one of Reporters Without Borders' 100 Information Heroes.
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.
