
The New York Times shutters NYT en Español after three years - hhs
https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/09/the-new-york-times-shutters-nyt-en-espanol-after-three-years-it-did-not-prove-financially-successful/
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heavymark
From the title one would assume they are no longer translating their site in
Spanish which of course is not the case, rather than had a site run from
Mexico City that didn't prove financially viable. "Moving forward, editors
will continue to translate signature journalism into more than a dozen
languages — including Spanish, which will continue to appear at
www.nytimes.com/es — as part of our core mission, and we will increase
investment in the expansion of these broader translation efforts.

This change does not affect our coverage of Latin America, which will remain
robust with dedicated staff based in Medellin, Mexico City and Rio de
Janeiro."

~~~
cirgue
"Major US brand tries to enter well-developed foreign market, faces
challenges, abandons attempt."

This happens all the time. It shouldn't be surprising that it is hard to
compete with a) the already-translated version of your own paper, and b) the
spanish-language print news media.

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cplanas
I am astonished by the comments I am reading here. One commenter suggests that
Spanish newspapers are not viable because of "low literacy rates". Another
assumes that newspapers in Spanish are directed to immigrants. I knew that
there was a certain level of prejudice against Spanish-speakers in the USA,
but I thought that the kind of people that reads this site would be better
educated than that.

~~~
notfromhere
It's pretty wild. Though I don't know why the NYT thought they'd be
competitive in the global Spanish news market. Not like there's not an already
well-developed media sector in LatAm and Iberia to provide quality reporting.

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mc32
I don’t think there’s a (big) market for that.

1st and 2nd gen immigrants will be integrated and comm in English like most
everyone else. 0-gen will stick to community papers (Like World Journal and
Epoch Times for Chinese speaking immigrants) and will avoid mainstream
alternatives.

One thing the community papers provide over things like NYT in Spanish is
reportage from back home. Very niche topics an NYT has neither time nor desire
to cover. And even if they did immigrants would go to elpais or whatever their
local favorite is. NYT cannot win that (newspaper) trade war.

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asveikau
Your comment appears to assume we are talking about immigrants. The article
states they were trying to reach an international audience. There are many
Spanish speakers around the world with no intention to immigrate to the United
States.

~~~
mc32
That doesn’t make better business sense. Latin America and Iberian Europe
already have great local papers obviously with local flavor and politics. The
NYT wants to go in with their editorship and think they’ll do a better job?
The only thing they could offer is “translate America” to a foreign audience.
That’s not a whole lot.

See[1]

>"The paper expects its largest audiences for the new product to come from
Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Spain. _There is also a sizable audience of
Spanish speakers in the United States._ "

[1][https://www.niemanlab.org/2016/02/en-espanol-the-new-york-
ti...](https://www.niemanlab.org/2016/02/en-espanol-the-new-york-times-
launches-a-spanish-language-news-site-aiming-south-of-the-border/)

~~~
nkaka8
What is Iberian Europe?

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cafard
Well, Spain, and Portugal, with maybe Andorra and Gibraltar thrown in. Perhaps
the Portuguese papers have Spanish editions?

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JetSpiegel
Not that I'm aware, if you are educated enough to read a newspaper in
Portuguese you can probably get the gist of the news in Spanish. It's not
mutually intelligible, but it's simpler in writing.

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buraequete
The real reason was that the name hadn't been translated to proper Spanish:
"Tiempos de Nueva York"

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seibelj
I keep reading the NYT out of a 20+ year habit but the level of
editorializing, even in news that should be straightforward to report, has
become so overt I can barely stand it anymore. Do I like Trump? No, not
really, but living in a 2 party system there is 0 percent chance that either
puppet at the top of the major parties represents even a fraction of my views.

Trump is not the literal devil but reading the NYT you would be forgiven for
believing so. There is not one thing a Republican can do that is positive, and
even Biden seems to be an enemy.

I guess I’ve moved on from mainstream reporting but it seems like it’s the NYT
that changed rather than me.

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jrockway
Completely off-topic for this article, but maybe you'd like the Wall Street
Journal. It's the exact same news, more or less, but the editorials are crazy
in the opposite direction.

I read both. The reality is, that most mainstream news sources agree on the
facts and even the analysis of news. Then they have editorials and columnists,
and that's where they really differ. But you don't really know for sure unless
you take in a variety of sources.

