NYC’s El Diario/La Prensa is ober 100 years old and has served as the voice of New York Latinos, especially during the times when they didn’t have a voice.
Founded as a weekly under the title La Prensa in 1913 in lower Manhattan, the newspaper merged with El Diario de New York decades later, leaving it with a compound name.
The paper’s audience has evolved with the times, serving a New York Latino population that has seen distinct waves of Puerto Rican, Dominican, South American and Mexican immigrants
Like many others, this publication has fallen on hard times in recent years under the combined pressures of the publishing industry’s uncertain transition from print to digital and the steep decline in ad revenue that hit publications in the wake of the economic crisis.
It is known as the champion of Hispanics, but some former employees fear it may disappear as a hard copy publication and from the shelves of newsagents.
My late friend and former City Islander Carlos D. Ramirez purchased El Diario La Prensa from the Gannett Company in 1989, and succeeded in turning the paper around.
Ramirez was publisher of this oldest and one of the largest Spanish-language newspapers in the United States, El Diario/La Prensa. He died at age 52 on July 11, 1999.