Más for the masses
By Juanita Darling Posted Wed, Sep 1 1999
During the dozen years of El Salvador’s civil war, political conviction distinguished the audience of one news organization from another. Readers of El Diario de Hoy were staunch supporters of right-wing military governments. Radio Venceremos listeners, on the other hand, sympathized with the guerrillas.
Seven years after a peace agreement ended the armed struggle, the memory of those distinctions still influences how Salvadorans choose who delivers their news, and it has become an obstacle for media trying to attract a wider audience. The situation reflects a challenge faced by newspapers and broadcasters across Central America, where the media are still defining their role in societies that now resolve differences with debate rather than bullets.
Radio Venceremos was once a feisty rebel radio station that broadcast from the insurgent rear guard, regularly packing up its transmitter just ahead of an assault and foiling repeated army attempts to silence it. Now, the station plays American oldies during the week and broadcasts local soccer games on Sunday from a crowded, but stationary, studio.
El Diario de Hoy has taken the editorializing out of its news articles and has begun to open its Op-Ed page to divergent views from columnists such as left-leaning political analyst Salvador Samoyoa. “El Diario de Hoy has begun to give space to people who do not think like the publishers,’’ says Rene Contreras, a journalism professor at the National University of El Salvador, the country’s oldest journalism school.
Even so, the newspaper’s publishers recognize that many Salvadorans will never be caught with a copy of El Diario de Hoy in their laps. “Some people have not figured out that they have changed,’’ Contreras says.
La Prensa Grafica, the other Salvadoran media stalwart, faces a similar problem because of its identification with a more moderate, though hardly leftist, government faction. Besides their political baggage, these newspapers have put off many readers with their emphasis on traditional political coverage: detailed stories about daily debates in the National Assembly and the shifting alliances of even the small political parties.
In response, a year ago, El Diario de Hoy created Más, a newspaper whose name means “More.” Más is aimed at people unlikely ever to read the flagship paper. It is filled with three- and four-column color photos and articles about water shortages and interrupted telephone service.
“Salvadorans are less interested in politics than journalists are,’’ says Más editor Alvaro Cruz. “Let’s face it. Sixty percent of the people do not vote.’’
Similar newspapers have sprung up in Guatemala, which ended its 36-year civil war in 1996, and in Costa Rica. Nuestro Diario, in Guatemala, and Al Dia, in Costa Rica, are owned by traditional newspapers looking for new audiences among the working class.
Significantly, politically polarized Nicaragua, the second-poorest nation in the Americas, has not yet developed its own version of Más. The closest comparison is El Nuevo Diario, which mixes eye-catching crime stories with heavy-handed leftist political commentary.
But in El Salvador, until the creation of Más, large sectors of the public were ignored by newspapers, Cruz says. “(Traditional newspapers) are more interested in the economy than whether dirty water is coming out of the pipes in Apopa,’’ a working-class San Salvador suburb featured on a recent front page.
When President Clinton stayed in San Salvador during a recent four-day visit to Central America, Más’ coverage emphasized the traffic jams his entourage caused as it moved about the city. When the mayor proposed a referendum to decide whether to legalize gambling, Más told readers it would cost them nearly US$1 million.
“This is a dynamic young newspaper aimed at the lower-middle class and lower class,’’ says Cruz. “We do not get (sports car) ads because my readers travel in buses, but they buy clothes and diapers, just like anyone else.’’
“These are the people who were on the battle lines during the civil war; they were war’s victims and now they are sick of politics,’’ he says. “Their living conditions have not changed despite a 12-year war.’’
Cruz says it was difficult at first to persuade editors to publish daily reports about trash pick-up and telephone service in poor Salvadoran neighborhoods.
“They wanted us to be like (El Diario de Hoy),’’ he says. That made every day a struggle as editors at the parent paper pushed for more traditional coverage in Más. However, since the beginning of this year, Cruz and his staff of 15 reporters and five photographers have had nearly absolute autonomy.
As a result, the newspaper celebrated its first anniversary with a circulation of 30,000, making it the country’s third-largest newspaper. Más is not yet profitable, but it could break even as early as next year, Cruz says.
“People want to be taken into account,’’ says Cruz. “They want to be in the news.’’