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El Diario/La Prensa, New York's biggest Spanish-language newspaper, since 1981 has endured as the misunderstood, neglected stepchild of Gannett Co. The giant newspaper chain originally bought the tabloid as the base to start up a national Hispanic paper. Instead, Gannett poured money into another national product, USA Today.
"Gannett has offered us resources we never had before," says Carlos D. Ramirez, El Diario's publisher and president. "But there are also obstacles. Gannett doesn't understand the Hispanic market, or Hispanics in New York."
The problem may be moot now. While Gannett declines comment, the Arlington, Va.-based media giant is reportedly showing 75-year-old Manhattan-based El Diario off to potential buyers, at the big-ticket price of $14 million to $16 million.
The speculation about El Diario's future comes during a timely chapter in the newspaper's and city's history. Financially the paper is finally in the black, but its subscriber base is shifting, and more costs must be cut.
The daily is also undergoing internal strife, and its dirty laundry has been aired publicly. Amid that turmoil, it must navigate the mayoral race, where candidates are eagerly courting the Hispanic vote and looking for the boost of an El Diario endorsement.
"That endorsement is so important and crucial that I think every politician would kill for it," says Wilbert A. Tatum, chairman of the Amsterdam News, the city's leading black paper.
None of this seems to matter to Gannett, which paid $9 million for El Diario, saying it was part of a first step to provide news and information to Hispanics across the country. But the tabloid, now with an unaudited circulation of 60,000, didn't fit easily into the chain's corporate culture or conform to its...