Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, Press Freedom

MEDIA-CHILE: Community Newspapers Take to the Web

Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, Feb 20 2007 (IPS) - Political science student Vlado Mirosevic, 20, is the proud editor of El Morrocotudo, Chile’s first community newspaper, where hundreds of people like him post news items of local interest on the Internet.

El Morrocotudo was founded in late 2005 in Arica, 2,000 kilometres north of Santiago, with the goal of becoming “the first community newspaper in the Spanish-speaking world,” Mirosevic, one of its founders, told IPS.

This digital newspaper publishes news, features and interviews by anyone who has something to say. There is also space for readers to comment on the articles, add information and recommend links. “The articles don’t fade as soon as we put them on the page. People have learned to converse, to dialogue,” its editor said.

Community newspapers have points in common with blogs (short for weblogs; basically online journals), and have an army of volunteer correspondents. El Morrocotudo, for instance, started with 30 contributors and now has 550. “People from the right or the left, catholics or evangelicals, write in. There’s no ideological discrimination,” said Mirosevic.

El Morrocotudo has a professional, paid staff of six, including a journalist who edits articles and checks their sources. “We publish 98 percent of the articles we’re sent. We reject only plagiarised or badly written items, or those that make unfounded accusations,” the political science student said.

Mirosevic said “we have had no more errors than any of the traditional media,” an important point given the possible risks associated with publishing articles researched and written by people lacking journalistic training.

Before launching El Morrocotudo, Mirosevic contributed to the Atina Chile blog, started by Arica Senator Fernando Flores, who recently resigned from the Party For Democracy (PPD), part of the governing coalition, because of differences with its leadership over the handling of corruption scandals within the party.

Flores himself prompted the student to go in for community or participative journalism, which Mirosevic prefers to call “experiential”.

El Morrocotudo was inspired by the South Korean site Oh My News, created in 2000 and considered to be the first community newspaper in the world. Other such sites include Wikinews, founded in January 2005 by the creators of the open encyclopaedia Wikipedia, and the Japanese portal Jan Jan.

According to Mirosevic, one of El Morrocotudo’s goals is to establish itself as an alternative to the local press, which is saturated with police and entertainment news. El Morrocotudo receives more than 7,000 visits a day.

Its custodians also want to “make the media and technology more democratic,” and contribute to making the Internet an effective social, educational and productive tool for Chile in the 21st century.

The seed capital for El Morrocotudo was put up by the Mercator Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to digital education and also founded by Senator Flores. Now its running costs come from advertisements on the website from large companies, like the multinational Telmex.

The positive response from cybernauts and companies motivated the owners of El Morrocotudo to replicate the experience in other areas of the country.

In 2006, they created El Observatodo in the Coquimbo region, 460 kilometres north of Santiago, El Rancahuaso in the O’Higgins region, 100 kilometres south of the capital, and El Amaule, in the Maule region in central Chile. They all receive between 2,000 and 3,000 visits a day.

The plan is to open up another four portals in 2007. None of them will be in Santiago, though. “In the regions there’s a sense of community, of belonging, and closeness that is missing in the capital,” and that is indispensable for the success of this kind of project, Mirosevic said.

Contacts have also been made with residents in the southern Peruvian town of Tacna, near Arica, who are interested in creating their own online community newspaper. “This is a very important project in terms of integration,” he said.

Those in charge of El Morrocotudo and its offshoots are planning for the combined property to be vested in a not-for-profit corporation, in which all profits will be reinvested.

The main predecessor of these community newspapers is the Gran Valparaíso portal, created by journalist Raúl Gutiérrez in the city of the same name, west of Santiago. It started in 2000 as a personal blog, but so many people wrote in with comments on its columns that its founder decided in 2004 to convert it into an “opinion and commentary journal.”

While both initiatives aim to provide a voice for civil society, El Morrocotudo is closer to the description of a citizens’ newspaper because it publishes news articles written by anonymous, ordinary people. Gran Valparaíso calls itself “an online newspaper written by citizens,” but Gutiérrez said that they contribute not to the news items but to the debate.

According to Gutiérrez, Gran Valparaíso received 302,000 visits in January, equivalent to 10,000 hits a day. Most of those who read it are young university students, and 96 percent of the published material is contributed by the young cybernauts.

Its main purpose is to fight “the sinister situation of press freedom in Chile,” where the press is monopolised by two big consortia, El Mercurio and Copesa, Gutiérrez told IPS.

“There is no media pluralism anywhere in Chile,” he said. And although he praised the work done so far by El Morrocotudo and its network, he was doubtful about the real intentions of the people behind the project, especially Senator Flores, who is a successful businessman as well as a politician.

It is strange that a newspaper like Gutiérrez’s, which has many more visitors than El Morrocotudo, should have so much more difficulty surviving financially. Gran Valparaíso has no support from companies, and Gutiérrez is also critical of the unfair distribution of state advertising.

“The government isn’t interested in pluralism. I ask myself: if we are visited by so many young people, why were we left out of the prevention campaign against HIV/AIDS?” Gutiérrez said, referring to the government’s 2005 media campaign.

Other Chilean electronic media outlets, like Foro Ciudadano and Diario de la Sociedad Civil, give space to online readers in their different sections, but are not based on “community correspondents.” Huella Digital, Chile’s first photojournalism website, organised by young people in Valparaíso, is an exception.

The success of this kind of project depends on social mobilisation, according to Mirosevic. That is why the website team has a person in charge of scouting for correspondents, and another who networks with social organisations.

Among this newspaper’s highlights is a campaign for better drinking water quality, launched on Feb. 15. “It was our correspondents and readers who really forced us into this campaign,” because they were continually writing in about the high levels of boron in the Arica region’s water supply. Apart from giving it an unpleasant taste, it damages washing machines and other appliances, Mirosevic said.

In partnership with environmental and consumers organisations, the newspaper is demanding that the authorities carry out scientific studies to accurately determine the composition of the water supplied by Aguas del Altiplano, a private company. Campaigners are pushing for a remedy for the situation revealed by El Morrocotudo.