Hardly hit by new communication trends and at this time by the coronavirus, the newspaper El Mundo, one of the most important media in Antioquia, turns off its presses. The one that was the school of many journalists in the country such as Darío Arizmendi, closes its doors from next Sunday, August 2.
It was the year of 1979. Full time of the Cold War and the historic election of Margaret Thatcher as the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in Colombia, then-President Julio César Turbay proudly introduced the color television signal, a historical milestone for the media of that time.
Far from world events, but not so much from new communication trends, a group of young liberals decided to found the newspaper El Mundo.
A plural means of communication, of daily rotation and which emerged as one of the most important and traditional in the region.
“I remember how a great chronicler like Pedro Nel Valencia told the Palace of Justice, I remember the very emotional, very fiery editorials of Darío Arizmendi, the editorials made almost like an engineering construction by Guillermo Gaviria”, recalls Luz María Tobón, director from the newspaper El Mundo.
Now the pandemic ends this tradition. The newspaper El Mundo closes its newsroom. Darío Arizmendi, one of its founders, burst into tears with the news.
“It saddens me … he is a son, he is the first son to dieBut the current owners of the newspaper, its journalists, and its collaborators, fought with great dignity to the end, ”says Arizmendi, the newspaper’s first editor, with tears.
A hard blow to Colombian journalism and to the plurality of its inhabitants.
“The loss of a means of communication melts democracy (…) The loss of citizen voices and citizen spaces are democratic losses ”, explains Luz María Tobón.
41 years of news are extinguished. El Mundo, a name that will remain in the memory of those who read it in a time when the pandemic did not fit in a single tabloid.
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