CHILE: A Newspaper Of and For 'the Voiceless'

• by Daniela Estrada (santiago)
• Monday, March 29, 2010
• Inter Press Service

The newspaper 'intends to genuinely represent the sector of society that has remained silent over the last 30 years, because of the complicity between the Concertación (the leftwing coalition that governed Chile from 1990 to 2010) and the rightwing media,' Marcel Claude, Diario Uno's editor-in-chief, told IPS.

Claude, an economist and activist who is critical of the capitalist model of development, successfully sued the Chilean state over access to public information at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2006.

'We do not wish to represent any particular political, ideological or religious group. We are citizens, academics and media professionals who have set ourselves the goal of breaking down the news barriers set up by Chile's press duopoly,' he said.

The El Mercurio group of about 20 national and regional newspapers, and the COPESA media conglomerate which controls La Tercera, La Cuarta and La Hora newspapers, as well as a chain of radio stations and the magazines Qué Pasa and Paula, make up the so-called Chilean press 'duopoly.'

Diario Uno will start out as a Sunday weekly, with a print run of 20,000 copies and a cover price of 600 pesos (just over a dollar).

To safeguard its independence and financial survival, Claude created a participative business model in the manner of a cooperative, in which any citizen can become a shareholder in the newspaper and elect its board at a general meeting.

There are 1,500 partners so far, and each share - non-transferable to avoid accumulation of stock - costs 10,000 pesos (about 20 dollars). The paper also hopes to receive donations from labour, student and community organisations that are 'discontented with the current political and development model, that is focused on amassing capital and concentrating wealth.'

The idea is to build up an editorial board with representatives of civil society organisations, academics and workers from various sectors.

Funds have been secured for the next four issues, and if they can build a readership of 30,000 the newspaper's survival is assured, said Claude, bringing to mind several print media that were forced to close down after the country's return to democracy in 1990, like the magazines Apsi and Análisis and the newspapers La Época, El Metropolitano and Siete.

'We will run advertising, but we won't depend on ads; we want to be sustained by citizen commitment,' said Claude, who pointed to the January election of Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, a rightwing businessman, as the trigger for launching the weekly paper.

Piñera, who took office Mar. 11, brought an end to 20 years of government by the centre-left 'Concertacion' or Coalition of Parties for Democracy, which was constantly criticised for lacking a policy to foment new media in order to counteract the high concentration and lack of pluralism of the country's news services.

Piñera himself owns the Chilevisión television channel, and his reply to frequent questioning of this conflicting interest is that a non-profit foundation will take over its management.

'We will keep tabs on the government, political parties and state institutions. We do not define ourselves as a newspaper of the opposition, or of the left. We want the problems that actually affect citizens to be debated publicly in their real dimensions,' said Claude.

Diario Uno joins isolated alternative media projects like the newspaper El Ciudadano, which came out in 2005, the monthly magazine El Periodista, and the most contentious and satirical of these publications, the fortnightly The Clinic. An international reference point for the new paper is the 'progressive' Argentine daily Página 12, Claude said.

The name Diario Uno (Newspaper One) can be explained in three ways, he said. In Chile, newspapers often use number order in their titles, like La Segunda (Second), La Tercera (Third) and La Cuarta (Fourth). In addition, he wishes to compete for influence with the top century-old paper El Mercurio; and finally, the paper's logo 'D1' is spoken as the phrase 'de uno', meaning 'one's own.'

'Over and above the specific characteristics of Diario Uno, I think that its creation and launch on the streets, and the effort put into it, is excellent news for the Chilean media industry,' Claudia Lagos, coordinator of the programme on freedom of expression at the state University of Chile's Communication and Image Institute, told IPS.

'Although I don't know the details of its proposed business model, I think the plan to collectively own the paper and to try other ways of opening up public debate is an important step, particularly in a context and market where new enterprises face high entry barriers,' she added.

In Claude's view, Diario Uno 'is a venture that will succeed if a large number of Chileans back the initiative and support it with their commitment.' Otherwise, 'there are two ways left to us: to disappear, or to be bought over or acquired,' he concluded.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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