Only English paper in Mexico closes
Posted on 01/01/2003 5:56:46 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Only English paper in Mexico closes
Spanish sister publication ends, too; News served expatriates
01/01/2003
MEXICO CITY - Mexico's only English-language daily newspaper, The News, said adiós Tuesday after 53 years of serving expatriates and training generations of young foreigners in the craft of bilingual journalism.
Also closing Tuesday was its Spanish-language sister publication, Novedades, which was popular in the 1960s and 1970s but had fallen on hard times in Mexico City's increasingly competitive newspaper market. Novedades was founded 65 years ago.
In a statement published in both newspapers, parent company Novedades Editores said "with profound sadness" that Tuesday's edition was the last, closing a chapter in Mexican journalistic history.
"Economic imperatives derived from the situation the country has lived through, and is living through, have forced us to cease both publications," the statement said. It added that both had been committed to fairness and professionalism.
Critics had accused the company of being pro-government during the seven-decade rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which lost the presidency in 2000. And some expatriate editors of The News had clashed with management over journalistic independence.
For many restless Americans, Brits, Canadians, Australians and others, working at The News served as a crash course in foreign journalism at rock-bottom wages. Many graduates went on to wire services and larger newspapers back home.
Ioan Grillo, a News reporter from Brighton, England, said the staff was informed of the paper's impending closure at 6 p.m. Monday. He said the announcement was not completely unexpected, given eight months of rumors that both Novedades and The News were up for sale.
Despite a final salary of about $750 a month after nearly two years on the job, Mr. Grillo said his time at the paper had been worthwhile.
"This has been a fantastic starting place for journalists," said Mr. Grillo. "I had a fantastic time in covering some really interesting stories."
Staff members, including about two dozen foreigners, held out hope that a new owner might emerge once the company had wrapped up complicated legal requirements and handed out hefty severance pay to unionized employees.
Media analysts have said The News has been suffering from the rise of the Internet and cable television in Mexico, which offers foreigners access to information directly from their home countries.
Several Mexican newspapers tried to compete with The News for the expatriate niche in the 1990s.
A broadsheet English-language newspaper, The Mexico City Times, took on the tabloid-format News in the early 1990s but closed because of a lack of advertising.
E-mail liliff@dallasnews.com
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