by Nate Martin
The Jan. 8 Buenos Aires Herald — B.A.’s English-language source of local, national, and international news since 1876 — featured a peculiar blue box on the top right corner of its front page. The text was entitled, “A note to our readers: A change to suit the times.” It discussed a recent administrative decision by the paper’s new owners to terminate the editorial page’s Spanish-language translations. The full text is as follows:
On September 4, 1943, the military government installed by the coup in June of that year, introduced sweeping changes in the constitutional process, and that included restrictions on the press. Within the new rules, the military regime, led by General Pedro Pablo Ramírez, ordered that newspapers printed in Argentina in a foreign language had to publish a Spanish-language translation of their leading article, or editorial column. As from that day, the 1,463rd day of the Second World War, according to the daily count in the Herald, this newspaper started to print a Spanish version of its editorials.
The practice remained in force until Spetember 1955, when in the aftermath of the overthrow of president Juan Domingo Perón the then Herald publishers decided to revert to the previous editorial without a Spanish translation. In July 1966 the government of General Juan Carlos Onganía reimposed the translation of editorials, and the Herald returned to the practice. Successive regimes insisted that the translation be kept.
Publication of the translation is seen by some readers as a useful service, and some students of the English language as helpful for dealing with homework. However, for other readers it has always been a vestige of dictatorship, which it is. For this reason, and to bring an end to that political era in Argentina, which is now 24 years into democratic rule, the Herald publishers have decided that the paper should abandon the translation of the leading article. The space thus saved will be devoted to other opinion articles and commentary.
We are in a time of change in Argentina, and the Herald. A more agile, compact, and concise paper is called for.
Gabriel Mysler
President
While this public explanation of the discontinued translations focuses on the idea that they remind people of a painful period of Argentine political history, the argument that erupted from the newsroom when the publishers announced that editorials would no longer be translated focused on anything but (full disclosure: Nate Martin works on the international desk at the Buenos Aires Herald).
At least in the open, most writers and editors in the newsroom disagreed with the decision to discontinue the translations. Executive Editor Michael Soltys, who composes the bulk of the paper’s editorials, argued simply that it is of the utmost importance to publish editorials that critique the government in a language that the government understands. The Herald, he said, has been an independent voice in Argentina for 130 years. Throughout that time the paper has consistently been willing to voice dissent in the face of authority, support opposition politicians, staunchly champion human rights, and fully participate in the media dialogue that helps shape political opinion in Buenos Aires. Without a Spanish version of the editorials, the paper becomes far less able to meaningfully participate in such dialogue, and less influential in the political scene.
During a two-hour-long meeting between newsroom staff and Mysler about the disagreement, Mysler said little along the lines of the rationale he had printed on the paper’s front page. Rather, he said quite simply: No one walks up to the newsstand to buy the Herald for its Spanish-language editorials. They buy it, he said, for stimulating coverage of local goings-on, and he kept repeating that the paper is in English. The space reserved for editorial translations, he contended, would be better used for such coverage, which fits in with new owner Sergio Szpolski’s drive to make the paper less reliant on wire stories and much more focused on original news and analytical content (in English). The administration’s argument is sound in this respect, as every wire story that graces the Herald‘s pages can now be easily found elsewhere online for free. Szpolski’s intentions to make the paper more relevant in the Internet age may prove lucrative for him, and the Buenos Aires Herald may become yet another successful publication in his collection (Szpolski also owns Newsweek‘s Spanish version, Buenos Aires Económico, Veintitrés, and Siete Días). However, the administration’s first apparent exercise of power over editorial control since it took over last month has left many Herald staffers wondering exactly how much exercising it plans to do.
Nate Martin also blogs at www.gratingspace.com
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