Recovered Media in Argentina: An Inclusive Digital Movement

Abstract

The basis for this paper is the recovered factories movement, which began in Argentina in 2001, and which has grown over the past decade to include media companies, transcending digital inequalities and turning them into opportunities for journalists and media outlets. Just like elsewhere, the situation for journalists in Argentina is precarious, with technological barriers increasing digital inequalities and a lack of respect for workers’ rights, particularly when political processes such as changes in government lead to new economic plans and market instability. This situation of great uncertainty for the press has given rise to a movement on the increase in recent years, known as “recuperated or recovered media” or “workers’ co-ops”. Between 2016 and 2017, at least six media outlets were recuperated by their workers after being closed down or abandoned by their owners, including La Nueva Mañana, in Córdoba; El Ciudadano of Rosario; La Portada, of Esquel; and the Tiempo Argentino newspaper and online news site Infonews, both based in Buenos Aires. Tiempo Argentino is the only national newspaper supported by its readership, contributing 70% of revenue, which has made it one of the few independent voices of dissent in Argentina at a time of high media concentration and domination. The Tiempo Argentino newspaper was one of the winners of the first Latin American Google News Initiative (GNI), illustrating how this movement has transcended politico-social difficulties and transformed digital inequalities into digital inclusion/opportunities. The GNI is an initiative that fosters innovation aiming to improve the sustainability of journalism in a digital era by developing open source software, so as to improve user experience on the Web and optimize internal management procedures for members. Once the software is finalized, the co-op will develop a prototype to be made available to other self-managed media outlets in order to strengthen their membership model. Hence, this exploratory study seeks to analyze the phenomenon of the recovered media in Argentina, focusing on the experience of Tiempo Argentino as the newspaper and its workers face a new digital challenge. At the end of 2001, Argentina’s political and economic crisis was the main theme in world news coverage. At this period and in response to the economic crisis, workers seized control of many abandoned factories. The rise of these “recuperated/recovered businesses”