Clarín (Argentine newspaper)

• 1. Introduction

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  Clarín, the Argentine newspaper founded by Roberto Noble on the 28th of August 1945, became the highest-sold newspaper in the entire Spanish-speaking world by 1985. That is a remarkable trajectory for a tabloid-format daily launched in post-war Buenos Aires. But the story of how it got there, and what it did with that power, raises questions that Argentines are still debating today. How did a paper born out of a single founder's vision survive his death and grow into a media empire controlling 59 percent of the country's cable television market? What political bargains were struck along the way, and at what cost to editorial independence? And why did a paper that once backed farmers against the government find itself at the center of one of Latin America's fiercest battles over press freedom?

• 2. Tabloid Origins

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  Roberto Noble was a former minister of Buenos Aires Province when he launched Clarín in August 1945. The paper arrived in an era of intense political ferment. Just months later, in the 1946 general election, Clarín backed José Tamborini, the candidate of the Radical Civic Union, against the populist Juan Perón. The paper declared that the Argentine people were voting for the constitution, for institutional order, for freedom. It was a combative opening statement from a newspaper barely a year old.

  Noble chose a tabloid format at a time when most Argentine papers used broadsheet, making Clarín physically easier to read on the go. By 1965, that accessibility had translated into sales leadership: Clarín became the highest-sold Argentine newspaper that year. In 1967, it became the first Argentine paper to sell a magazine with its Sunday edition, a commercial innovation that deepened reader habit. Two years later, in 1969, the paper reorganized its editorial structure by splitting news into thematic supplements, a model that treated readers as people with specific interests rather than a single undifferentiated audience.

• 3. After Noble

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  Roberto Noble died in 1969, the same year he reorganized the paper's sections. His widow, Ernestina Herrera de Noble, stepped into the director's role and inherited a paper with ambitions that outran its finances. Clarín was struggling economically, and Ernestina turned to Rogelio Julio Frigerio, an economist and wholesaler who had been one of her husband's most prominent allies. Frigerio lent the paper US$10 million in 1971. That loan came with an ideological current attached. Frigerio's centrist Integration and Development Movement, known as the MID, championed government support for infrastructure investment and import substitution industrialization. Clarín continued to endorse that platform.

  On Frigerio's advice, Ernestina hired Hector Magnetto on the 2nd of March 1972, initially as an advisor. Magnetto was affiliated with the MID and would go on to take charge of the newspaper's finances. His arrival marked a turning point in who held real operational power at Clarín. The paper's developmentalist ideology, which it would maintain until the 1980s, shaped how it covered industry and the economy. In 1976, Clarín invested in the creation of Artes Gráficas Rioplatense, known as AGR, a printing company that gave the group high-color printing capacity and the foundation for future expansion.

• 4. Political Alignments

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  Clarín backed the Revolución Libertadora when it overthrew Juan Domingo Perón in 1955. On the 22nd of September that year, the paper published the biography of Eduardo Lonardi, the general who led the coup. The following day it wrote that an "appointment of honor with freedom" had arrived, and that "the night is behind us." Those were not the words of a neutral observer. They were the words of a paper that had taken sides.

  Decades later, a different set of alignments proved equally consequential. Néstor Kirchner renewed the Clarín Group's transmission licenses for ten years in 2005 and later approved the group's acquisition of cable company Cablevisión. The magazine Noticias, from the newspaper Perfil, later accused Clarín of having signed a "pact" with Kirchner. Editor Darío Gallo of Perfil pointed to the group's expanding telecommunications businesses as the context for that alleged arrangement. Relations between Clarín and the Kirchner government fractured in 2008, when the paper backed farmers during a dispute over export taxes. The break was public and bitter. President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner implemented a media law that her administration said promoted plurality of voices. Opponents called it an attack on freedom of expression. Héctor Magnetto, by then general director, responded that there is no freedom of expression without an independent press and that if one weakens, both are at risk.

• 5. Building the Conglomerate

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  A law reform in 1999 opened the door for Clarín to expand beyond print. The group moved quickly, assembling holdings in radio, television, internet, and other newspapers under the banner of Grupo Clarín. That same year, on the 27th of December 1999, the Clarín Group and Goldman Sachs subscribed an investment agreement. The American investment firm managed a consortium that made a direct investment in the group, taking an 18 percent minority stake. The deal represented both an injection of capital and a signal that Clarín's ambitions were now operating at an international financial scale.

  Clarin.com launched in March 1996, giving the paper a digital presence ahead of many of its peers. By April 2011, the site was drawing nearly 6 million unique visitors daily in Argentina, making it the fifth most visited website in the country that month and the most widely visited of any site based within Argentina itself. By August 2015, third-party analytics providers Alexa and SimilarWeb ranked clarin.com as the 10th and 14th most visited site in Argentina respectively. SimilarWeb placed it as the 3rd most visited news website in the country, attracting almost 32 million visitors per month. The Sunday magazine, first launched in 1967, was renamed "Viva" in 1994, a name it carried into the modern era.

• 6. Circulation and Market Power

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  Clarín is part of Periódicos Asociados Latinoamericanos, an organization of fourteen leading newspapers in South America, which reflects the scale at which the paper operates regionally. Within Argentina, its market position is concentrated and at times dominant. The group controls 59 percent of the cable television market and 42 percent of the radio market, according to AFSCA, the Argentine law enforcement agency that oversees media.

  Print circulation tells a more complicated story. At its peak, Clarín held 35 percent of the Argentine newspaper market, measured in 1983. By 2012, that share had declined to nearly 21 percent, with circulation falling to 270,444 copies. The paper prints and distributes around 330,000 copies nationally but commands a 44 percent market share specifically in Buenos Aires, where its readership is most concentrated. The Argentine author Horacio Estol served for many years as Clarín's New York correspondent, covering aspects of American life for Argentine readers. That international reach, even through a single correspondent, speaks to the kind of newspaper Clarín set out to be from the beginning: one that looked outward as well as inward, and that understood its readers as citizens of a world larger than their own borders.