The New York Times announced today is pulling the plug on its NYT en Español platform.
The site was launched in 2016 and run out of Mexico City.
Paulina Chavira, one of the site’s editors, tweeted the news (in Spanish) and what the project meant for the team:
“It is with great sadness that we report that the @nytimeses today shuts down its operations. For NY it is a “corporate” decision, but for us it was a project in which we put our heart into.”
Con mucha tristeza y pesar les informamos que hoy cierra operaciones @nytimeses. Para NY es una decisión «corporativa», pero para nosotros (@albinsonl,@borismunoz,@ebudasoff,@marina_ef,@MJVega,@patynietog,@Nat_Guti,@eldacantu) fue un proyecto al que le pusimos todo el corazón.
— Paulina Chavira (@apchavira) September 17, 2019
The company issued the following statement about the closure on the site:
As of today, we’ve discontinued NYT en Español as a separate, standalone operation. Since it launched in 2016, the site published around 10 high-quality original and translated New York Times stories a day in Spanish.
We launched NYT en Español as part of an experiment to reach and engage more international readers by extending our coverage to different languages. While the Español site did attract a new audience for our journalism and consistently produced coverage we are very proud of, it did not prove financially successful. Our strategy is now focused on our subscription-driven core news report for a global audience. 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.