100 Years Of El Diario/La Prensa
The oldest Spanish-language newspaper in the country turns 100 this year.
New York’s El Diario/La Prensa will celebrate its centenary with a series of events over the course of this year aimed at highlighting the paper’s role in the city.
“During these years, we’ve been the voice of New York Latinos, especially during the times when we didn’t have a voice,” the paper’s publisher and CEO Rossana Rosado told Spanish newswire EFE.
Founded as a weekly under the title La Prensa in 1913 in lower Manhattan, the paper merged with El Diario de New York decades later, leaving it with a compound name, according to The New York Daily News. Today, El Diario/La Prensa's offices are in Brooklyn.
The paper’s audience has evolved with the times, serving a New York Latino population that has seen distinct waves of Puerto Rican, Dominican, South American and Mexican immigrants.
Like most print dailies, the paper has fallen on hard times in recent years under the combined pressures of the publishing industry’s uncertain transition from print to digital and the steep decline in ad revenue that hit publications in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis.
Paid circulation has declined from a peak of 80,000 in the late 1980s to 38,325 in March of 2012, according to Audit Bureau of Circulation figures cited by New American Media. Argentina’s La Nación bought El Diario/La Prensa’s parent company, ImpreMedia, last year.
Neverthess, the paper’s leadership remains optimistic.
“Over the last century, the newspaper has been a major player in New York’s landscape, helping shape the destiny of the Hispanic community and championing the causes that are dearest to its heart,” Rosado said in a statement. “El Diario/La Prensa’s ground-breaking mission of empowerment through information and civic engagement will continue to touch the lives of generations to come.”
Take a look back at El Diario/La Prensa’s 100-year history in the slideshow above.
Before You Go
