History
The newspaper was created in 1963 through the merger of El Diario de Nueva York (established 1947) and La Prensa (established 1913 by Rafael Viera) when both were purchased by O. Roy Chalk. In 1981, Chalk sold the newspaper to Gannett Company, in a deal valued at $10 million.
The paper's publisher, Carlos D. Ramirez, and his investment group El Diario Associates, purchased the paper in 1989 from Gannett for a price just over $20 million. The paper had been unprofitable for as three years and circulation had declined from a peak of 80,000 to under 70,000. With the addition of new technology and improved journalism, Ramirez was able to increase circulation to 68,000 by the time of his death in 1999 and to return the paper to profitability. Under his leadership, the paper won as Best Hispanic Daily from the National Hispanic Publishers Association.
El Diario Associates joined in 1995 with Latin Communications Group, a firm that operates 18 radio stations, with Ramirez running the business's print division and serving on the board.
El Diario La Prensa merged with the Los Angeles-based La Opinión in 2004 to form ImpreMedia. La Opinión is the largest Spanish-language newspaper publisher in the United States.
The newspaper has won many awards from the National Association of Hispanic Publications. In 2005, its awards included first place for editorial writing, political and cultural reporting, and feature writing.
El Diario's chief competitor is Hoy, a Spanish-language daily with 180,000 readers in New York. However, on February 12, 2007, ImpreMedia announced that they had purchased the New York edition of Hoy from the Tribune Company.
In 2010 long-term journalist Vicky Pelaez, whose writings were critical of United States foreign policy and supportive of Latin American leaders Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, was arrested for working for Russia. The "Illegals Program" was a part of Russian influence operations.
Read more about this topic: El Diario La Prensa
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