El Espectador is a
newspaper with national circulation within
Colombia
, founded by
Fidel Cano Gutiérrez on 22
March 1887 in Medellín
and
published since 1915 in Bogotá
. It
changed from a daily to a weekly edition in 2001, following a
financial crisis, and became a daily again since 11 May 2008, a
comeback which had been long rumoured, in
tabloid format (28 x 39.5
cm). Since 1997 its main shareholder is
Julio Mario Santo Domingo.
It is the oldest newspaper in Colombia. Since its first issue to
the present its motto has been "El Espectador will work for the
good of the country with liberal criteria and for the good of the
liberal principles with patriotic criteria". It was initially
published twice a week, 500 issues each. It defined itself as a
"political, literary, news and industrial newspaper". Years later
it became a daily and in 2001 became a weekly. Since then, the
paper uses the slogan "El Espectador. Opinion is news", implying it
now focuses in
opinion articles, not in
breaking news. This focus was kept
when it regained its daily format on 11 May 2008.
Fidel Cano Gutiérrez, founder of
El Espectador
In 1994,
after conducting a survey, Le
Monde considered El Espectador one of the best
eight daily newspapers in the world, along with The New York Times (United States
), Financial
Times (United
Kingdom
), Izvestia
(Russia
), People's
Daily (China
),
Al Ahram (Egypt
),
Asahi Shimbun (Japan
), and
Times of India.
According to the latest
Estudio General de Medios (EGM –
Segunda Ola 2007 (II-2007)),
El Espectador has 687,900
readers every week. It is a member of the
Inter American Press
Association and the Asociación de Diarios Colombianos
(ANDIARIOS).
In 2007, its publisher Fidel Cano Correa said he did not agree with
current President
Álvaro
Uribe Vélez's personal behaviour and government style, but he
specified that was his own position and not the newspaper's.
History
Since its foundation,
El Espectador acted as a speaker for
Colombian Liberal Party, at
the time opposed to the administrations of the
conservative Regeneration. It
was closed by the authorities several times:
- 8 July 1887, by Rafael
Núñez administration, 134 days after its first issue, until 10
January 1888.
- 27 October 1888, by the then designated Carlos Holguín, until 12 February 1891;
previously, the Catholic Church had
forbidden its followers to read the newspaper, because of the
critics to the lavishness of the Catholic Church in public
celebrations made by its director.
- On 26 September 1892 the government fined the newspaper with
$200.000 after considering one of its
articles "subversive".
- 8 August 1893, by Antioquia
governor Abraham García, until 14 March 1896. Fidel Cano Gutiérrez
was jailed.
- On 27 June 1896, until 27 April 1897, due to a favourable press
law recently passed by the Congress.
- The outbreak of the Thousand Days
War made El Espectador to suspend its activities
between 19 October 1899 and 16 October 1903
- On 17 December 1904 it was suspended again, after facing
difficulties and opposing Rafael Reyes
administration. It appeared again on 2 January 1913, as a
evening daily in Medellín.
Since 10
February 1915 El Espectador was simultaneously published
in Medellín and Bogotá. Its
Medellín edition was suspended on 20 July 1923.
In 1948, after the
murder of Liberal Party
chief
Jorge Eliecer
Gaitán, its circulation was suspended during three days. Since
then,
El Espectador had to deal with the
censorship of the then ruling Conservative Party
several times. On 9 November 1949,
Luis Cano Villegas, its director, retired
as a protest for the seizure of the entire edition by the
government, being replaced by his brother
Gabriel Cano Villegas. On 6 September
1952, its facilities, then located downtown Bogotá, as well as the
building of competitor
El
Tiempo and the houses of Liberal Party leaders
Eduardo Santos and
Carlos Lleras Restrepo, were looted
and partially destroyed, apparently with tolerance from the
government. It reappeared on
16
September.
In 1955 the newspaper outspokenly opposed to the military
government of
Gustavo Rojas
Pinilla, publishing several articles by
Alberto Lleras Camargo, with a big
effect on
public opinion. In
December, the government accused
El Espectador of several
accounting and tax irregularities, and fined the newspaper with
$10,000 on 20 December 1955. On 6 January 1956 the National Taxes
Direction imposed
El Espectador a sanction of $600,000.
Its directors, who were forbidden to respond the accusations on the
paper, suspended its publication that day.
A blackout at
El Espectador
facilities
In order to replace
El Espectador, on 15 February 1956
appeared
El Independiente, directed by Alberto Lleras
Camargo, who retired in April when the newspaper was closed during
a few months. It was published again in 1957 but due to an
agreement by the opposition newspapers, it suspended its
publication on
5 May. Five days later, Rojas
Pinilla was ousted.
El Independiente circulated until 1
June 1958, when it was formally replaced by
El
Espectador.
In 1964 its headquarters moved from downtown to western Bogotá, on
the
avenida 68, known at
that area as
Avenida El Espectador. At the inauguration,
its then director
Gabriel Cano said:
"if El Tiempo
has the best corner in Bogotá, El
Espectador
has the best corner in the country."
Throughout the 20th century
El Espectador was the main
Liberal newspaper, with
El Tiempo, both holding an
important political influence. Among its main contributors it had
some of the most important Colombian
journalists at the time, like
Luis Eduardo Nieto Caballero,
Alberto Lleras Camargo,
Eduardo Zalamea Borda,
Gabriel García
Márquez,
Eduardo
Caballero Calderón,
Klim,
Antonio Panesso Robledo,
Inés de Montaña,
Alfonso Castillo Gómez,
José Salgar, as well as
cartoon Hernán Merino,
Pepón, Consuelo Lago, and
Osuna.
Journalism of ideas
During the 20th century
El Espectador criticized other
mass
media in Colombia, which
preferred to remain silent instead of denouncing the atrocities
happening in the country. On early 1980s, the then daily published
several articles denouncing illegal loans and other irregularities
against the
Grupo
Grancolombiano, one of the most powerful economical groups at
the time. As a retaliation, several big companies pulled their ads
on the paper out, which was already facing some financial issues.
El Espectador disavowed this fact and dedicated a
editorial piece to its credibility and the credibility of those
economical groups.
El Espectador also demanded on its editorials
freedom of the press and denounced the
political censorship the independent media outlets had to deal with
to not being closed, stating that
"not even in the worst times
of press censorship or political
retaliation, some had to resort to crime in order to silence the
press, in one of its more noble and higher democratic functions." It recognized that in
Colombia "the
death penalty ordered and executed
from the lowest social holes has become an habit, as a revenge to
the labour of social sanity the press is committed to."
It concluded saying that
"the siege and danger feeling —on the
press— would negatively be reflected on the very own democratic
system."
The newspaper rejected to be considered as "subversive opposition"
and criticized Liberal president
Julio César Turbay Ayala's
government, which on its words wished to
"have a totally aulic,
extremely pro-government press, not silenced but flattering."
To defend itself, the paper published 15 July 1979 a column named
Si eso es oposición... ("If that's opposition...") On the
same text, the newspaper declared itself "neutral", considering
that a democracy should not be
polarized, "
because in the times we are
living, newspapers are increasingly more independent from
governments, more devoted entirely to report and guide according to
their honest knowledge and understanding," adding that the
"
unanimous, one-way, uniformed, official press is (intended)
for dictatorships and not for
democracies... and we believe that Colombia is still a
democracy."
El Espectador also criticized, openly,
drug trafficking:
Guillermo Cano's murder
As stated before,
El Espectador stood firm against drug
trafficking and often published articles on its crimes.
On 17 December 1986, the then director of
El Espectador,
Guillermo Cano Isaza, was
assassinated in front of the newspaper offices by gunmen paid by
Pablo Escobar, after publishing
several articles critical of Colombia's drug barons. Cano left the
headquarters around 19:00 on his family
station wagon. After he made a
U-turn on the Avenida El Espectador, one of the
hitmen approached the wagon Cano was driving, shot him on his chest
eight times, and then ran away on a
motorcycle identified with the licence plate
FAX84. Cano was 61 years-old, and had been a journalist for 44. His
murder is still considered unpunished. The next day,
El
Espectador's main
headline was
Seguimos adelante ("We are going on").
The
World
Press Freedom Prize, awarded annually by UNESCO
since 1997,
is named in his honour, for "his courage, his compromise with
independent journalism and the tenacity with which he fought for
his country", which "are an example for the rest of the
world to follow. Guillermo Cano's fate exemplifies
the price paid by journalists the world over in exercising their
profession; journalists are imprisoned and ill-treated every day
and the fact that these crimes, for the most part, go unpunished is
even more alarming."
On 2 September 1989 the paper's offices were bombed by the
Medellín Cartel. The blast occurred
around 06:30; it blew the building's roof up, destroyed the main
entry and affected the newspaper's production. The bomb was hidden
in a
van parked minutes before it exploded in
front of the main entry.
The same day, 6 armed men broke into an
exclusive island in Islas del
Rosario, near Cartagena de Indias
, and set fire to the Cano
family's summer house.
Defence of the freedom of the press
On 29 May 2000
Reporters
Without Borders issued a
letter of
protest to
Interior Minister
Humberto de La Calle Lombana,
on the
kidnapping of journalist
Jineth Bedoya, at the time working for
El
Espectador, allegedly carried out by members of the
paramilitary
United Self-Defence
Forces of Colombia (AUC). Robert Ménard, RWB's secretary
general,
"stated that he was "scandalised" by this latest
attack on Bedoya". She would later join
El
Tiempo.
On
23 August 1999, a group called
Colombian Rebel Army (ERC) published a
communiqué issuing
death threats
against 21 personalities engaged in the then ongoing peace process,
accusing them of
"promoting war between Colombians". Among
those personalities two
El Espectador contributors were
mentioned,
Alfredo Molano y
Arturo Alape. On
19
January 1999, Molano left the country (he would return years
later). Molano had condemned the massacre of 130 people perpetrated
weeks before by members of AUC commanded by
Carlos Castaño, who had referred to
Molano as
"paraguerrilla". On
18
September,
Plinio Apuleyo
Mendoza, who had worked for
El Espectador and
RCN Radio, went into
exile.
Between February and May 2000, journalist
Ignacio Gómez received at least 56
threatening letters. In an article published by
El
Espectador, Gómez had revealed that a massacre where 49
peasants were killed was perpetrated by paramilitary militias
supported by members of the
Colombian
Army. After escaping a kidnapping attempt in Bogotá on
24 May, Gómez sought refuge in the United States on 1
June 2000. He would return to Colombia one year later and become
part of
Noticias Uno TV newscast.
On 21 March 2003 columnist
Fernando
Garavito left Colombia for the United States, after several
death threats. He denounced human rights violations by AUC, as well
as the alleged tolerance on drug barons in the past by the then
presidential candidate
Álvaro Uribe Vélez. On 8
February 2003
photojournalist
Herminso Ruiz was beaten and had his
camera confiscated by members of the
Colombian National Police while he
was covering
El Nogal club
bombing. The incident was contempt by organizations as
RWB.
On May 2003 the newspaper, through an editorial written by its then
director
Ricardo Santamaría,
reported on "interference" on an investigation it was carrying on
the alleged irregularities in
Banco del Pacífico, claiming that
Police intelligence officials had obtained access to a draft of the
report and sent it, through the Colombian National Police director,
Teodoro Campo, to the then Interior Minister
Fernando Londoño, who was a
chairman of the bank. Organizations defending freedom of the press
expressed their contempt and their "deep concern". Campo denied any
involvement, while minister Londoño claimed the draft was sent
anonymously to him.
On 18 November 2004, a Bogotá court sentenced columnist and
film director Lisandro Duque to three days in jail and a
470
euros fine, for not publishing a
rectification after a sentence for
defamation, when in column published 13 April
2003 Duque criticized Claudia Triana de Vargas, manager of a film
production company. Instead of rectifying, Duque wrote in a piece
published
7 September that he had "no
enough evidence" to support his criticism. Duque appealed the court
sentence.
El Espectador in the 21st century
Presence on the web
Elespectador.com logo since March
2008
On 29 May 1996 the then daily newspaper launched its website
elespectador.com. Its design format and layout have been
changed several times In 2006 later added the .com to its logo,
comments to the articles and user registration. Access hits to
Elespectador.com grew 79% in 2007.
On 7 March 2008 elespectador.com was revamped, setting up four
"editions": online, latest news, news map and print version.
It also
improved the registration system and the RSS
feeds, and added tags, audio, and videos taken from
Noticias Caracol, newscast
from sister network Caracol
TV
, uploaded to its YouTube
channel. The website is built with
Drupal.
Elespectador.com received the
Colombian
Chamber of Computing and Telecommunications's
Premio
Colombia en Línea 2008 award to the best online news website
in the country.
From daily to weekly
Despite
El Espectador had been the Colombian newspaper
with the second highest
circulation, after
El Tiempo,
the financial difficulties worsened and in 1997 the Cano family
sold most of their shares in Comunican S.A.,
El Espectador
publishing company, to
Julio
Mario Santo Domingo, who at the time owned
Cromos,
Caracol
Radio (later sold to Spanish group
PRISA)
and Caracol TV. Its headquarters moved to the
Avenida El Dorado. In
September 2001
El Espectador became a weekly
newspaper.
RWB stated that
"media diversity suffered a heavy blow"
when the newspaper
"downgraded itself to a weekly."
The
Cali
newspaper El
País said: "El Espectador is a standard in
defence of freedom, the fight against drug trafficking and
corruption."
Since then, their editors
Rodrigo
Pardo,
Carlos Lleras de
la Fuente, Ricardo Santamaría, and
Fidel Cano Correa tried to recover the
financial balance and the newspaper's circulation. As a weekly, it
was published on Saturdays, with Sunday's date. Counting with the
free time readers have available on weekends,
El
Espectador focused on opinion, investigation, and analysis
pieces, recovering its circulation, influence, and earnings.
In 2007 Fidel Cano Correa stated in an interview with
Revista Semana that
"[the return to
a daily edition] is just a possibility. We have doing very
well during the last three years, especially the last one."
The Spanish group PRISA was considered as an strategic partner, but
the negotiation failed when Santo Domingo refused to cede the
control of the paper to PRISA. On 11 May 2008
El
Espectador became a daily again, changing from
broadsheet to tabloid format.
Daily focus, supplements, and alliances
Every day of the week, except Sunday,
El Espectador
devotes around 10 pages to a specific "focus":
- Monday: Negocios (Business)
- Thursday: Deportes (Sports)
- Wednesday: Internacional (World news)
- Thursday: Vivir (Living)
- Friday: Cultura (Culture)
- Saturday: Gente (People)
It also publishes three magazines, published once in a month each:
Autos/
Motos,
Espacios, and
Discovery
Health. On Mondays
El Espectador publishes a 6-page
edition of
The New York Times
International Weekly, and on Tuesdays a two-paged
Fox Sports minisection. It also
syndicates articles from
Harvard Business Review and
El País.
Design
Since 2004,
Lucie Lacava's Lacava
Design has been in charge of
El Espectador's design for
its print edition.
El Espectador uses
Hoefler & Frere-Jones's
Mercury and
Gotham typefaces
since then.
Current management and employees
El Espectador nameplate used
between 2000 and late 2002.
El Espectador nameplate used
between late 2002 and 2004, when it switched to the first and
current masthead.
President
Publisher
Editorial board
Editors
- Jorge Cardona,
editor-in-chief
- Sara Araújo, Arts and
People.
- Olga Lucía Barona,
Sports.
- Angélica Lagos,
International.
- Leonardo
Rodríguez, elespectador.com
- Norbey Quevedo,
Investigations.
- Juan David Laverde, Crime and
Law
- Hugo García Segura,
Politics
- Luis F. Gutiérrez, Business
- Fernando Araújo
Vélez, Bogotá
Regular columnists
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Syndicated columnists
Former Publishers
References
- see sample
External links
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