Voces, Huffington Post’s Spanish-language portal aimed at U.S. Hispanics, is no more. Launched on May 1, 2012 as a HuffPo rebranded site, previously known as AOL Latino, Voces no longer has a landing page.
Going to the voces.huffingtonpost.com URL redirects the user to the HuffPo’s Latino Voices English-language site. And if you click on the Voces (en español) link on the Latino Voices site, it takes you nowhere. It’s an inactive link.
As one insider told Media Moves, “the website was turned off.”
The last members of the Voces team in the U.S. were laid off last week in a wave of Huffington Post cuts. Among them: Managing Editor Marinés Arroyo, Senior Editor Hirania Luzardo, and Senior Entertainment Editor Mandy Fridmann.
The three women had worked on the site since it was AOL Latino.
A source says layoffs had been a constant at Voces, almost since its inception. At its peak, there were aproximately 20-25 people working for the online pub. By last week, that number had dwindled to the three U.S. editors and a couple of outsourced contributors/editors based in Mexico.
A request for an explanation as to why Voces was shut down and if any changes were planned for Latino Voices elicited the following one line response from a Huffington Post spokesperson:
“We’ll be transferring HuffPost Voces to HuffPost Mexico, a new edition we’re preparing to launch that will serve our Spanish speaking audience in Latin America.”
Further questions about the issued statement and the fact HuffPo is abandoning Spanish-language content for U.S. audiences went unanswered at the time of this publication.
The statement seems to stray from Arianna Huffington’s Voces 2012 welcome message, which announced “a Spanish-language vertical that will bring the power of HuffPost’s blogging platform to the legacy of AOL Latino,” reflecting “the real experience of Latinos in America,” and revolving around “community and social engagement.”
Update 1/22: After persisting on an answer about the future of HuffPo’s Latino Voices and a request on why Voces was shut down, a company spokesperson sent the following reply:
“There are no changes planned for Latino Voices and we intend to continue reaching our US Latino audience through the section. In addition, we will be launching HuffPost Mexico this year, a new edition that will serve our Spanish speaking audience in Latin America.”
Asked if HuffPost Mexico would take over the Voces URL, the spokesperson said no. Mexico’s site, scheduled to launch in the first half of the year will have a new URL.
The spokesperson would not answer why the company opted for eliminating Spanish-language content for U.S. Hispanic audiences, but said: “We know that Latinos in the U.S. read our entire site, not solely the Latino Voices section. That being said, Latino Voices will continue to be a vibrant part of The Huffington Post.”
No que los millennials, que la digital era, que las plataformas alternativas, que los hispanos, etc?
O sea, is back to basics: money, big one, is still in the TV world.
Yep!!
Es una pena que ya no vamos a poder disfrutar de esta revista en espanol, lo siento por todos esos periodistas y empleados en general, que hacian posible que llegaran asia nosotros todas esas noticias y diversos temas en nuestro idioma latino.
Yo estuve buscando mucho el por que, no podia leer la revista en espanol y de casualidad encontre esta pagina.
Espero que como yo muchas otras personas se puedan enterar de lo que ocurrio, lo cual me da mucho pesar.
Lo siento mucho y alli hay discriminacion……
It’s a shame. The BULK of our Latino community is more concerned with Telenovelas, Futbol and what celebrity is sleeping with whom than with important matters — this is why we are lagging in progress.
Una vez mas el pobre contenido de la información y más aún amarilla en su dirección aburre a todos.
Esto como Fusion y como tantas otras mata el mercado hispano y las empresas americanas con este argumento tienen un clavo mas en el ataúd que los Hispanos no consumen en español, cuando es porque quienes escriben, reportan lo hacen desde el punto de vista de la minoría, casi quejándose que da vergüenza ajena.
Por eso es que los Hispanos no leen esto. No tienen interés. Porque no escriben lo que consumen.
Una pena.
Ok, why in this day and age do they think that having Huffpost Mexico will be geared towards ALL Latin Americans? Umm, hello? We’re not all Mexicans.
Not sure who is to blame here. The closed-minded ignorance that still exist in white corporate America or the fact that we as Latinos haven’t surpassed their stereotypes. We do still show them with the high ratings that dumbed down telenovelas and other simpled-minded shows on Univision and Telemundo are what “Latinos” care about.