Chicago has two daily newspapers.
By comparison, in Lima, Peru, there are more than 20 dailies.
Walking by a local newsstand you can see the daily editions posted on a wall.
There is a variety of names from Sol, Extra, Ajá, Expreso and La Razón. Many of them are tabloids and some have racy photos including of half naked women.
The most respected newspaper in town is called El Comercio.
My colleague at Columbia College Chicago, Elio Leturia, was formerly the design director of the newspaper, and he arranged a tour of El Comercio for our students here for the Travel Writing course we are teaching in Peru.
The family-owned newspaper was founded in 1839. (That makes it older than the Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times.)
"Every day there is a new (newspaper) and some others die," said Hugo Guerra, executive editor of the newspaper, who gave us a personal tour last week. "But all the papers here are city wide."
The daily circulation of El Comercio is around 80,000 and 200,000 on weekends. They have 140 reporters working there, Guerra said.
But they also own several other newspapers and are part of a newspaper group.
I wondered why there are so many dailies in Peru.
One newspaper vendor told me it may because people don't have as many computers as they do in the United States.
"Here there is a big difference between the classes," said vendor Anali Escobar, who runs a newsstand that her parents have owned for more than 20 years. "Not everybody has access to the Internet."
That's good news for local media as Guerra said their profit margin is 37 percent compared to U.S. papers with an 18 to 20 percent, he said.
He also gave us a guided tour of their elegant library which has editions of the paper dating back to its founding. There's a table with eagles carved into the legs symbolizing press freedom.
In the late 60s there was a dictator, Juan Velasco, who took over the newspaper. In the 1990s under President Alberto Fujimori the military came and tried to censor the newspaper. They have had to struggle to remain as independent as they are today.
"That's press freedom," Guerra said. "Untouchable."
Filed under: culture, Latin America, media
Tags: Alberto Fujimori, Chicago Tribune, El Comercio, Hugo Guerra, Lima, newspapers, Peru, Sun-Times
