economy

Photo by José F. Ponce

The Panama Star moving to fill the print void

At the end of the 21-year dictatorship, decades of repression, years of US economic sanctions, the ravages of a military attack that left hundreds dead and the ensuing mass looting and vandalism left a lot of things Panamanian in shambles. One of these was the newspaper business.

El Panama America and La Critica had been confiscated from the descendents of Harmodio Arias by the dictatorship, with the father of entertainer/tourism minister Rubén Blades being the police sergeant sent to take possession. The business ended up in the hands of Escolastico "Fulele" Calvo who used its presses and offices to publish the Norieguista paper La Republica. In the course of the invasion Calvo was jailed by the American troops and held without charge by the new government for about a year and one-half. The business was returned to its prior owners, who restarted it promptly.

La Prensa? That was a more difficult transition. Noriega's boys had not only shut that business, which was collectively owned by hundreds of minority shareholders --- mostly of Panama's  wealthy families and business elite --- and run by Bobby Eisenmann (of the family that developed Coronado). They destroyed all of La Prensa's equipment in the process, leaving Eisenman to return from exile to pick up the pieces.

So how was it done?

Largely on the strength of a contract with the Miami Herald, then of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain. The Herald would publish an international edition, and print it in Panama, at La Prensa's rebuilt plant.

After Knight-Ridder sold the Herald, and well after the Eisenmann faction lost control of La Prensa in a shareholder revolt, another arrangement between La Prensa and the Herald created a Panama-specific Miami Herald edition, with some pages of La Prensa stories in English translation.

But these are bad days for the newspaper business, particularly in the United States. The Miami Herald's very survival is in doubt, and part of its desperate downsizing has been the elimination of Panama edition. As of mid-June, the local edition of the Miami Herald was no more.

There are some bilingual narrow-focus print publications and there are now several English-language news websites in Panama (most, but not all, of them just exercises in copyright piracy). There is but one printed English-language news publication left standing, the Panama Star section of La Estrella de Panama.

The Star was caught somewhat by surprise, but is moving to upsize to fill the gap. The challenges will be daunting --- a new format, expanded coverage, improved editing and layout, an ad sales effort of its own, pressures from political factions in the American community who would like to destroy what they can't control to resist --- but the field is open for the Panama Star and the group of companies that headed by Abdul Waked and Ebrahim Asvat that publishes La Estrella and El Siglo is moving to occupy the ground. Don't look for more than an ephemeral vacuum in the wake of the local Miami Herald edition's demise.