If you read the history of journalism in Colombia, you will find a name: El Espectador, the oldest Colombian newspaper that returns to its daily edition.
Fidel Cano founded El Espectador on March 22, 1887 in Medellín as a political, literature, news and business newspaper. In 1915 was published in Bogotá and it remains in that city since 1923. It suffered censorship from Conservative governments after the killing of the presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitán in 1949 and it was attacked in 1953 together with El Tiempo.
A Street of the capital of Colombia has its name, Avenida El Espectador, at the West of the city where there is its main headquarters. Important journalists have written in El Espectador and it has been the most influential newspaper in Colombia.
On December 17, 1986 gangsters of late Pablo Escobar killed journalist Guillermo Cano Isaza, then director, whose dead shocked the national and international public opinion to the point that Unesco created the “Guillermo Cano Isaza” World Prize for Freedom Press.
An economic crisis in 2001 caused that the journal became a weekly with contents dedicated more to opinions.
The economical recovery puts back the journal to the Colombian streets to fulfill the information spectra. Gonzalo Córdoba, president of Comunican S.A., the company for the edition of the journal, said:
“From being an enterprise with notable economical difficulties and the risk of closing, today there is a solid economical situation. At the same time, and doubtless as a central reason for its recovery, El Espectador has won a recognition as an independent journal, analytic, deep and of obliged reading for the so-called leaders and generators of opinion in our country.”
Fidel Cano, the Director, said in the digital publication:
“We wanted to deep in the investigative journalism in Colombia. With the noticeable space of opinion pages, we have strengthen the role of a the critic conscience that El Espectador had since the first years.”
For the Santo Domingo family, the will to acquire it was not to do business, but to maintain alive the oldest Colombian newspaper and guarantee its independence.
good blog friends! Post your article which is also useful for readers and to share information or experiences you have.
Hello,
El Espectador was a great journal and it belongs to another time in the history of Colombia. This resurrected version will be more a nostalgic ideal of some elders, but it cannot reach the same quality of former times. Colombia needs a new version, a new newspaper, able to answer the new things of our century.
Thank you.
Good for ElEspectador. I am a reader.
It has to do a good effort to become that old and traditional newspaper that gave figures of heroism for journalism in Colombia. It seems better a romantic idea. The old Espectador died long time ago.