If any publication shows the public demand for trustworthy journalism, it’s this one
Ignacio Escolar and his colleagues at elDiario.es have succeeded in producing high-quality journalism “in spite of everything” for the past 10 years. Those words are in fact part of the slogan of the publication he co-founded in Spain, elDiario.es: “Journalism in spite of everything” (Periodismo a pesar de todo).
Theirs is not just any journalism, but one that investigates, challenges, and attempts to answer the why and how, not just the who, what, where, and when. elDiario.es attempts to hold the powerful accountable.
Ignacio Escolar, co-founder and CEO of elDiario.es
What is the “everything” that stands in the way of trustworthy journalism in Spain? Mainly it’s the self-reinforcing networks of corporate money, political power, and compliant news media. (We’re all familiar with this in the US as well.) Much of the news media needs the money too much to risk rocking the boat. Some are too lazy or intimidated to expose this systemic corruption.
Previously in My News Biz: 10 reasons for optimism about the news business
Economic independence is key
On the tenth anniversary of the founding of elDiario.es, Escolar, the CEO, recalled how a handful of newly unemployed journalists pooled their savings and support from friends to launch a digital news outlet dedicated to journalism independent of the powers that be.
You have to be optimists to take on this kind of task. These digital news pioneers had one clear idea: that editorial independence could be achieved only through economic independence. The editors and reporters could not be looking over their shoulders, worried about offending an investor, bank, or political party. (His 10th anniversary report, with all the financial results and graphics, is here in Spanish.)
The graphic shows the growth in revenues (ingresos) of elDiario.es since 2012, growing to more than 10 million euros in 2021. The yellow bars show revenues from advertising, the blue bars show the contributions from individual donors (socios, literally partners). The proportion of donor revenues has increased so that now it represents almost half of all income.
Investing in quality
The business has been profitable almost from the beginning. It had a pre-tax surplus of 1.6 million euros in fiscal 2021. As Escolar told me years ago, “Journalism is not a business but a public service. But it’s a public service that has to be profitable to survive.” The team controls costs carefully.
Escolar and the team of journalists are the principal shareholders of the publication. They choose to reinvest any surpluses in hiring more people, paying better salaries, and improving technology.
The publication’s newsroom has 120 employees plus 10 interns, who also receive a salary. In addition, they have another 75 journalists under contract to provide local news in each of the country’s provinces. In 2020 they added a Latin American bureau in Buenos Aires, which employs another 18 journalists.
With so much wrong, why optimistic?
On the eve of Spain’s contentious July elections, Escolar saw a public torn between two dominant emotions — fear and optimism. Which would win out?
The fear was for a return to authoritarian government reminiscent of Franco’s four-decade dictatorship. Other European countries have gone that way — Poland, Hungary, and Turkey among them. The war in Ukraine is symbolic of the struggle against authoritarian governments.
Escolar urged readers to act and vote with optimism.
He wrote: “Some time ago I realized a truth that I believe is universal: most human beings suffer more from what could happen than from what actually happens to us. Like almost everything, fearing for the future that has not yet arrived is part of our evolution: imagining ourselves so often in the worst situations is an overreaction of the strongest instinct we have, that of survival.
“The human being is the animal that suffers the most from what has not yet happened because we have the power to imagine. We are afraid of the future for the same reason that art or science exists: because of our capacity for abstraction . . . .”
“When I realized this great truth, I decided – without being reckless – that I was going to try not to suffer any more because of the problems that are yet to come. When things happen, I’ll have a bad time. Not before.”
Final thoughts
Fear of failure kills innovation and ideas. Optimism encourages us to take calculated risks.
Only optimists like Escolar and the team at elDiario.es would take on the massive task of defying an entrenched economic and political system. They have become a nationally recognized alternative voice in a country not always friendly to entrepreneurs and upstarts.
In one landmark corruption investigation, elDiario was nearly as alone as the Washington Post in its early Watergate coverage or the New York Times in its Pentagon Papers stories.
I’m talking about their report on Cristina Cifuentes, the conservative premier of Madrid’s legislature, who managed to obtain a master’s degree with falsified grades and without attending classes. The university was a tool of Cifuentes’ Popular Party.
The English edition of Spain’s major daily also reported on the scandal, but gave credit grudgingly to “an online newspaper” that broke the story. (elDiario’s original story here, in Spanish.)
The moral of the story is that good news takes time to reveal itself. The story of elDiario.es has taken a decade to unfold. Bad news, such as the decline of traditional media and watchdog reporting, travels fast. We all know bad news as soon as it happens.
Escolar’s story reaffirms my optimism. We can achieve more by focusing on how to build a better future than fearing all the disasters that have not yet happened.
***
Here is a link to my 2015 video interview with Escolar.