La Nación

The paper was founded on 4 January 1870 (replacing the former publication Nación Argentina), by former Argentine President Bartolomé Mitre and associates. Until 1914, the managing editor was José Luis Murature, Foreign Minister of Argentina from 1914-1916. Enjoying Latin America's largest readership until the 1930s, its daily circulation averaged around 350,000, and exceeded only by Crítica, a Buenos Aires tabloid.[9] The 1945 launch of Clarín created a new rival, and following the 1962 closure of Crítica, and the 1975 suspension of Crónica, La Nación secured its position as the chief market rival of Clarín.[10]

Originally published in Bartolomé Mitre's home (today, the Museo Mitre), its offices were moved a number of times until, in 1929, a Plateresque headquarters on Florida Street was inaugurated.[11] The publishing group today is headquartered in the Bouchard Plaza Tower, a 26-storey Post-modern office building developed between 2000 and 2004 over the news daily's existing, six-storey building.[12]

The director of La Nación, Bartolomé Mitre (the founder's great-great-grandson), shares control of ADEPA, the Argentine newspaper industry trade group, and of Papel Prensa, the nation's leading newsprint manufacturer, with Grupo Clarín. The newspaper was part of the conflict between Kirchnerism and the media, when Lidia Papaleo denounced, endorsed by the Kirchners, that they would have been forced to sell Papel Prensa under torture during the Dirty War. Judge Julián Ercolini acquitted him in 2016, pointing that there was no evidence to support the claim.[13]

In early 2012, La Nación bought ImpreMedia, the publisher of El Diario-La Prensa, La Opinión and other US-based Spanish-language newspapers. On October 30, 2016, La Nación announced a change in its printing format, with weekday editions now being printed as tabloids and weekend editions retaining the traditional broadsheet format.[14]

In 2019, the Society for News Design named La Nación as the World's Best Designed Newspaper, sharing the award together with The Sunday Times and The New York Times.[15]

La Nación's daily circulation averaged 165,166 in 2012, and still represented nearly 20% of the daily newspaper circulation in Buenos Aires; the paper is also distributed nationwide and around the world.[16]

According to third-party web analytics providers Alexa and SimilarWeb, La Nación's website is the 9th and 17th most visited in Argentina respectively, as of August 2015.[17][18] SimilarWeb rates the site as the 4th most visited news website in Argentina, attracting almost 32 million visitors per month.[18][19]

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  Cover to #1, 4 January 1870.
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  Building on San Martín 500.
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  The Bouchard Plaza building.
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  [20]Current headquarters of La Nación from 2015, located in Vicente López, Buenos Aires Province.

La Nación was born as a partisan newspaper, to sustain the political action of Bartolomé Mitre, former President of Argentina.[21]

Until the death of its owner, it ideologically supported the national liberalism and the National Civic Union.[22][23]

Since then, the newspaper consolidated a trend conservative-liberal,[24] being critical of the radical and peronist governments.

- Is La Nación liberal, conservative or progressive?

- La Nación is simultaneously a liberal and conservative newspaper ... and we feel good in that place.

- Can you explain it?

- We are conservative regarding the defense of values that are highly representative of Argentine society.

- What values?

- The defense of freedom, the defense of a minimum order without which an organized society is not possible, the defense of the republican institutions that the constituents of 1853-60 gave us. And we are liberals in the broadest sense of the word. We are not liberal economists, but as long as we are in favor of the possibility that in all areas of knowledge the reader has a plural informative offer.

José Claudio Escribano, historical Deputy Director of the newspaper and member of its Board, being interviewed by Carlos Ulanovsky, in the book 'Stop the rotations' (1997).[25]

Some of the most famous writers in Latin Ameirca have appeared regularly in its columns: José Martí, Miguel de Unamuno, Eduardo Mallea, José Ortega y Gasset, Rubén Darío, Alfonso Reyes, Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa and Manuel Mujica Láinez. Also Alberto Lleras Camargo, former President of Colombia, worked in the newspaper.

Today, among its most prominent columnists are Joaquín Morales Solá, Carlos Pagni, Hugo Alconada Mon, Jorge Fernández Díaz, Juan Carlos de Pablo, Nora Bär, Facundo Manes, Iván de Pineda, Luis Majul, Pablo Sirvén, Francisco Jueguen, Orlando Ferreres, José del Río, Carlos Reymundo Roberts, among others.

• (in Spanish) Official website