MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Spanish newspaper El Pais launched this week its Chilean edition

Strong demand for serious analytical, responsible news

The Spanish newspaper El Pais is strengthening its presence in Latin America after starting this week with an edition in Chile that will be distributed together with the Santiago daily La Tercera.

The alliance “was possible because both papers share a global vision of society today, they both have a cosmopolitan vision and are highly involved in the new technologies and the digital universe for developing journalism, El Pais said Tuesday in its Chilean edition.

The Spanish daily also has collaboration accords with newspapers in Argentina, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, countries where, according to El Pais, its distribution increased by 260% in the last year.

By virtue of the agreement, readers of La Tercera will receive an edition of El Pais prepared especially for Latin America on the basis of the contents of the Spanish daily and “its view of the political, economic, social and cultural worlds.”

“The presence of El Pais in Chile, through the alliance it is launching today with La Tercera, is a logical move in these times of crisis and an exciting challenge,” the editor of the Spanish paper, Javier Moreno, said.

“Prisa (publisher of El Pais) is consolidating its presence in Chile because it continues to believe that the worldwide reach of the Spanish language – in news, communications, entertainment and education – would be meaningless without America,” he said.

For his part, La Tercera editor Cristian Bofill said that the results garnered by his daily over the last decade show that in Chile there is a “strong demand for serious, analytical and responsible news, and that there is still room for a wide margin of growth.”

“By opening the doors to El Pais, La Tercera continues to rely on the same values that have guided its development in recent years: journalism that is serious, pluralistic, analytical, of great credibility and with a universal vocation,” Bofill said.

Besides the distribution of El Pais, the Prisa group is present in Chile through the book publisher Santillana and Iberoamericana Radio Chile, a chain of 140 broadcasters that is the Andean nation’s biggest radio network.