Buenos Aires Herald returns after six-year hiatus

The Buenos Aires Herald, closely associated with Argentina’s British and American communities, as well as tourists, returned as an online daily after shutting down in 2017.

The English-language journal, founded in 1876, later earned internal renown for its coverage of the “disappeared” – people who were forcibly abducted, tortured and murdered by the state during Argentina's last dictatorship in the late 1970s – when much of the country’s media stayed silent.

The Herald, which - like most Argentine newspapers - had suffered steadily-declining circulation since the 1970s, was purchased by the owners of the country's largest business daily, Ámbito Financiero, in 2008 - and in 2015 by the Indalo Group, which owns Argentina's top-rated progressive cable news network, C5N.

The Indalo Group is currently pursuing litigation against members of the right-wing Mauricio Macri administration (2015-19) for political persecution, including alleged attempts to use pro-Macri courts to seize the group.

A key defendant in the case, Macri fixer Fabián “Pepín” Rodríguez Simón, has had an Interpol Red Notice issued against him in 2021 for avoiding subpoenas to testify. Rodríguez Simón, 64, is reportedly living in neighboring Uruguay - whose courts are still mulling his extradition.

The Herald's main competition in this new chapter will be the centrist Buenos Aires Times, owned by the Perfil Group.

At: https://buenosairesherald.com/op-ed/editorial/the-buenos-aires-herald-is-back

A sign of the times, a 2016 headline in the Buenos Aires Herald, Argentina's best-known English-language daily, presages its closure a year later.

Its owners revived the daily - long a favorite among Argentina's English-speaking community - this Friday.

The Herald earned international renown for helping expose Nazi activities in Argentina in the 1930s and '40s - and for raising awareness of the country's disappeared during the last dictatorship in the late 1970s.

It later earned the ire of Argentina's largely right-wing media for its criticism of former President Mauricio Macri, whose sharp utility rate hikes - and alleged use of allied courts against the Herald's owners - helped lead to its closure in 2017.