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El Mercurio y La Tercera Golpe a golpe Impedir la arremetida de su competencia como un panzer. Esa es la misión de Cristián Zegers, el nuevo director del diario de Agustín Edwards. La batalla amenaza con ser igual o más fiera que la de la Pepsi contra la Coca Cola, la de Microsoft contra IBM o la de Piñera contra Claro. ¿El botín? La influencia, el prestigio y el poder de ser el medio de referencia para la elite chilena. Esta es la historia que no podrá leer el domingo en la prensa. Por Miguel Paz La soleada mañana del pasado lunes 20 de marzo el ex director de La Segunda, Cristián Zegers, recibió un escueto llamado telefónico de Agustín Edwards Eastman. ?Vente hoy a almorzar a mi casa?, le dijo y colgó. Horas después, mientras comían a solas en la amplia residencia de Edwards en Lo Curro, éste le explicó el motivo de la invitación: ?Quiero que seas el nuevo director de El Mercurio?. Zegers casi se atragantó con la noticia. Esperó mucho tiempo para oír esas palabras, pero ahora no podía creer lo que escuchaba. A sus 66 años, el abogado, Premio Nacional de Periodismo, ex subdirector de El Mercurio entre 1978 y 1980 y cabeza de La Segunda por casi 25 años, estaba más cerca de la jubilación que de emprender un nuevo reto periodístico. Aun así, le pidió a Edwards un día para pensar su respuesta, una actitud más ajustada a las formalidades mercuriales que a su deseo de aceptar inmediatamente, porque a primera hora del día siguiente dio el sí. La tarde de ese martes 21 de marzo, cuando Zegers entró a la oficina de reuniones de El Mercurio, recibió un caluroso abrazo de su amigo Roberto Méndez, director de Adimark y miembro del comité asesor de la presidencia. Junto a éste se encontraba Edwards, quien hace sólo algunos momentos había anunciado a los editores el golpe de timón que todos sus asesores le venían insinuando hace tiempo: remover al ginecólogo Juan Pablo Illanes de la dirección responsable del diario. Méndez era parte de ese coro, al igual que el gerente general Jonny Kulka, el editor nacional Héctor Olave, el consejero Jorge Lesser, y hasta los asesores más recientes: el mexicano José Luis Parra a quien Edwards conoció hace años en una reunión de la Asociación Mundial de Periódicos y el presidente de Icare, Alfredo Moreno. Para ninguno de ellos la sorpresa fue que Illanes recibiera el sobre azul, sino que Edwards se atreviera a hacer el cambio, pues todos compartían desde hace al menos cuatro años un diagnóstico lapidario: El Mercurio no tenía una dirección periodística clara y sus diferentes secciones funcionaban como feudos. Algo refrendado por un personero del segundo piso del ex presidente Ricardo Lagos, que mantuvo contacto permanente con el diario: ?El Mercurio es una especie de monstruo de muchas cabezas. Los editores competían y se contradecían unos a otros. Pero no es un lío de Edwards ni de ellos, sino de Illanes. Si eres director de diario, tienes que escribir y ensuciarte las manos?. Illanes era director responsable desde mediados de los ?80. Llegó a ese cargo recomendado, entre otros, por Jaime Guzmán Errázuriz ante Agustín Edwards, a quienes unía un lejano parentesco familiar. A él le tocó la misión de encarar el nacimiento de La Epoca, una alternativa más progresista, y de enfrentar el fantasma de una eventual pérdida de liderazgo, tal como le sucedió al conservador ABC arrollado por El País, tras el fin de la dictadura de Franco en España. (Leer más)

Aug 24th 2006 From The Economist print edition The most useful bit of the media is disappearing. A cause for concern, but not for panic ?A GOOD newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself,? mused Arthur Miller in 1961. A decade later, two reporters from the Washington Post wrote a series of articles that brought down President Nixon and the status of print journalism soared. At their best, newspapers hold governments and companies to account. They usually set the news agenda for the rest of the media. But in the rich world newspapers are now an endangered species. The business of selling words to readers and selling readers to advertisers, which has sustained their role in society, is falling apart (see article). Of all the ?old? media, newspapers have the most to lose from the internet. Circulation has been falling in America, western Europe,Latin America, Australia and New Zealand for decades (elsewhere, sales are rising). But in the past few years the web has hastened the decline. In his book ?The Vanishing Newspaper?, Philip Meyer calculates that the first quarter of 2043 will be the moment when newsprint dies in America as the last exhausted reader tosses aside the last crumpled edition. That sort of extrapolation would have produced a harrumph from a Beaverbrook or a Hearst, but even the most cynical news baron could not dismiss the way that ever more young people are getting their news online. Britons aged between 15 and 24 say they spend almost 30% less time reading national newspapers once they start using the web. Up to a podcast, Lord Copper? Advertising is following readers out of the door. The rush is almost unseemly, largely because the internet is a seductive medium that supposedly matches buyers with sellers and proves to advertisers that their money is well spent. Classified ads, in particular, are quickly shifting online. Rupert Murdoch, the Beaverbrook of our age, once described them as the industry's rivers of gold?but, as he said last year, ?Sometimes rivers dry up.? In Switzerland and the Netherlands newspapers have lost half their classified advertising to the internet. Newspapers have not yet started to shut down in large numbers, but it is only a matter of time. Over the next few decades half the rich world's general papers may fold. Jobs are already disappearing. According to the Newspaper Association of America, the number of people employed in the industry fell by 18% between 1990 and 2004. Tumbling shares of listed newspaper firms have prompted fury from investors. In 2005 a group of shareholders in Knight Ridder, the owner of several big American dailies, got the firm to sell its papers and thus end a 114-year history. This year Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, attacked the New York Times Company, the most august journalistic institution of all, because its share price had fallen by nearly half in four years. Having ignored reality for years, newspapers are at last doing something. In order to cut costs, they are already spending less on journalism. Many are also trying to attract younger readers by shifting the mix of their stories towards entertainment, lifestyle and subjects that may seem more relevant to people's daily lives than international affairs and politics are. They are trying to create new businesses on-and offline. And they are investing in free daily papers, which do not use up any of their meagre editorial resources on uncovering political corruption or corporate fraud. So far, this fit of activity looks unlikely to save many of them. Even if it does, it bodes ill for the public role of the Fourth Estate. Getting away with murder In future, as newspapers fade and change, will politicians therefore burgle their opponents' offices with impunity, and corporate villains whoop as they trample over their victims? Journalism schools and think-tanks, especially in America, are worried about the effect of a crumbling Fourth Estate. Are today's news organisations ?up to the task of sustaining the informed citizenry on which democracy depends?? asked a recent report about newspapers from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a charitable research foundation. Nobody should relish the demise of once-great titles. But the decline of newspapers will not be as harmful to society as some fear. Democracy, remember, has already survived the huge television-led decline in circulation since the 1950s. It has survived as readers have shunned papers and papers (Leer más)