181€ million to keep Catalan-language media alive

Front page of La Vanguardia, in Catalan

BARCELONA, Spain -- Americans are used to traveling thousands of miles within their wide open spaces and hearing only English, with variations of accent and expression.

But in France, Germany, Spain, and other parts of Western Europe, there are still regions of distinct languages and dialects preserved by geographic barriers, sedentary culture, and autonomous politics.

So it should not have been a surprise to find that an international media event in Barcelona, to which I was invited to speak, was conducted not in Spanish but in Catalan, that Romance language of northeastern Spain and southern France. Even Spanish presentations were translated simultaneously into Catalan. (Disclosure: The sponsors paid me an honorarium and my travel expenses.)

600 media in Catalan

But it was surprising to learn that there are nearly 600 media outlets in the Catalan language and that the government of the region has spent 181€ million (link in Spanish) since 2008 to prop them up with grants and advertising, according to a lengthy investigation by the daily newspaper El Mundo.

'Every journalist has to be a user-experience designer'

Maria Ramirez of El Español interviews Gideon Lichfield.
(Photo: TIE Comunicación/Congreso Periodismo)

HUESCA, Spain -- A digital business publication like Quartz qz.com would seem to be making all the right moves. In just over two years it built an audience of 10.9 million unique users a month.

(Versión en español)

But the struggle is to continue growing amid heavy competition and to start turning a profit. So Quartz's senior editor, Gideon Lichfield, was looking for answers and ideas just like the other 350 journalists, professors, and students attending the XVI Digital Journalism Congress. He was also on the program to talk about Quartz, including its plans for expansion into Africa.

Win the competition

Lichfield worked for The Economist for 16 and knows both the print and digital worlds. Digital requires journalists to think more about the audience, he told me in an interview. "How people consume the journalism, how it reaches them, when they're reading it and so forth, that is completely different," he said. "In a print magazine, you don't really think about any of that. The formats are set.

"In digital, every journalist also has to be a user-experience designer to some extent. They have to be thinking about how is someone going to come across my article, what's going to make them read it, what's going to make them share it, what's going to make them get to the end. What sort of device are they going to be reading it on. What time of day might they be reading it. What methods could I be using other than text to get my point across more clearly, more efficiently."

In Spain, two digital journalism success stories

Ignacio Escolar, left, of El Diario and Pedro J. Ramirez of El Español (photo: James Breiner)

HUESCA, Spain -- Two of the leading figures of the digital media revolution took the stage together and chatted about what it is like to wear the hats of journalist, shareholder, owner, and chief salesman of their respective media outlets.

Both had founded important print newspapers. Both had turned to digital media in search of independence from the control of public discourse exerted by the political and business elite. Both are evangelists for making better journalism to build a better society.

And both had achieved remarkable financial successes with innovative business models for digital media. A packed auditorium at the XVI Digital Journalism Congress wanted to hear how they did it.

'Partners' not subscribers

"How did we get here?" asked Ignacio Escolar, 39, who founded El Diario ("The Daily") in 2012 with a handful of journalists who had been laid off or cast aside by traditional media in the financial crisis. "We're journalists, shareholders, directors, and chief promoters because we were pushed into starting our own media companies."

A finger in the eye for Spanish journalists

Arsenio Escolar, photo by 20minutos

Versión en español

HUESCA, Spain -- At first, there was timid, nervous applause from the journalists, professors, and students who were listening to harsh criticism from a respected colleague, Arsenio Escolar, the editor of 20minutos, a free distribution daily that is one of Spain's major digital outlets.

Maybe they were recognizing themselves among those who were being criticized.

In a call to arms, Escolar urged Spanish journalists to stop being so obsequious to the powerful and to call attention to growing inequality and poverty.

"We need a journalism that is fair, transparent, distant from power, ethical, and social," he concluded in the inaugural address at the XVI Digital Journalism Congress in this resort town in northeast Spain.