Newsroom integration at El Pais: change the systems to change the culture

Borja Echevarria with El Pais digital desk in the background. (Photo by James Breiner)

Versión en español aquí. 

El Pais is perhaps Spain’s most prestigious newspaper, but its parent company has been suffering financial problems, the print edition has lost readers and it trails its chief competitor in web traffic.

All of these factors have set the stage for the radical changes under way in the newsroom.

Leading digital journalist sees room for small media

Gumersindo Lafuente: Journalists need to look ahead, not back. "You can´t live off nostalgia." (Photo by James Breiner)

Versión en español aquí.

Gumersindo Lafuente, 53, is one of Spain‘s pioneers in digital journalism. He headed the web operations at El Mundo before going out on his own in 2006 and launching soitu.es, an innovative news operation that won audience and critical approval but closed in 2009 when its investor-partner pulled the plug.

Since then Lafuente has headed the web initiatives at El País, which is No. 1 in print readership and No. 2 in web traffic in Spain. In an interview in his office in Madrid, he drew on all these experiences in offering advice to digital entrepreneurs.

How to make money on digital journalism: a course in Spain

Last week I gave an all-day seminar to 30 journalists in Valencia, Spain, on the business aspects of starting a digital news outlet.

It‘s easy enough to launch a blog or web page, but the hard part is making money. I gave participants a series of examples of revenue sources other than advertising and subscriptions:

Journalism students in Madrid told to "go for it"

During a presentation at the Complutense University of Madrid (center), I talked about the new vision of entrepreneurial journalism (center photo) and some of its advocates. One of the attendees created a collage of the people mentioned: (clockwise, from upper left) Clay Shirky of NYU, Dan Gillmor of Arizona State University, Brian Stelter of the New York Times and Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter.

MADRID -- Traditional news media are suffering in Spain, with some 3,500 journalists laid off in the past two years. Add to that the recent news that one of the country’s most prestigious news organizations, Prisa Group, owner of El País newspaper, is laying off 2,500 workers, or nearly one in five.

The dream of journalism students to work for large media organizations is being crushed by economic reality. I urged a group of 150 at the Complutense University in Madrid to start their own digital media and be news entrepreneurs.


I told the students about a number of news entrepreneurs in Latin America, where I worked for three years, and some of the innovative news projects in the U.S., such as Texas Tribune, ProPublica and Voice of San Diego.

Argentine journalist searches the deep Web for scoops

Versión en español aquí.

Sandra Crucianelli is a pioneer in hyperlocal journalism on the Web. Her news website, Solocal.info (Just Local), provides in-depth investigative coverage of the industrial port of Bahia Blanca, 400 miles from Buenos Aires in Argentina.

She and two partners manage the site, which has 790 registered users and 50 regular contributors of news, videos, fotos and opinion. In a city of 300,000, Sololocal.info attracts 4,500 unique users weekly.

Tech, intermediaries leave newspapers far behind

I came away from reading the State of the News Media in 2011 with the sense that newspapers in particular are being left farther behind by all of the advances in technology and payment systems.

One example is Apple. Although it is selling subscriptions to publications on its iTunes platform, it is taking 30% of the revenue and keeping the all-important customer data and credit card information to itself.

Few news entrepreneurs in Latin America make money

Versión en español aquí.

A study of 54 independent journalism sites in Latin America has found that 20% of these new ventures produce no revenue.

What’s more, only one-fourth of the for-profit operations are covering their costs. Most did not do a financial viability study before launch and less than half are taking advantage of social media.

Those are some of the findings of a survey of new journalism initiatives conducted by the prestigious New Journalism Foundation for Iberoamerica, as reported on the website of ABC in Spain.