One More Newspaper Gives Up the Ghost: Spanish Language Hoy New York Goes Web-Only
by Peter Kafka
Posted on December 30, 2008 at 3:39 PM PT
Here’s another newspaper that’s giving up on newsprint and going all-digital: Hoy New York, a free Spanish-language daily, published its last print edition today.
The move will cost 16 employees their jobs, says John Paton, CEO of Impremedia, the publisher that owns Hoy and several other Spanish-language titles, including El Diario La Prensa in New York and La Opinión in Los Angeles.
Hoy joins a handful of other pubs that are cutting back on print or ditching it altogether–most recently, the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News announced they would limit home delivery of the print edition to three days a week–but I wouldn’t go overboard reading too much into this one. That’s because the free distribution strategy that Hoy employed has been an experiment from the get-go.
That said, New York still boasts two free print dailies: Metro, published by Sweden-based Metro International SA, and AM New York, published by Cablevision (CVC), which bought it along with Newsday from the troubled Tribune Co. (TXA), which sold Hoy to Impremedia last year. Both target the elusive and wily young, affluent, nonnewspaper-reading demo.
