In Puerto Rico, a Nonprofit 'Sun' Rises Daily

By: Mark Fitzgerald Nonprofit business models are the talk of the newspaper industry on the U.S. mainland. But in Puerto Rico, 85 press workers, salespeople and journalists who lost their jobs when the San Juan Star folded last summer aren't just talking about the nonprofit model -- they've formed a cooperative that publishes the island's only English-language daily.

The Puerto Rico Daily Sun launched in October, with each member of the new Cooperativa Prensa Unida kicking in $800. The Puerto Rican Department of Labor and Human Resources pledged $1 million for payroll expenses, but had paid just $250,000 when spending was frozen by a new administration.

Daily Sun Executive Editor Marisol Lora understands those who wonder why now, of all times, someone would start a print newspaper. "If this were a new Spanish-language paper, I'd just say, ?no way,?" she says. But with the Star folding, Puerto Rico was wide open for an English-language paper that would target an upscale readership.

Besides, she said, the cooperative believes it can do a better job of operating a newspaper than the Star?s management did. Lora was the former paper?s special sections editor, and as chairman of its Newspaper Guild unit, led picketing when paychecks began to bounce last year. The Star locked out union workers in August and soon after abruptly shut down.

The out-of-work employees moved just as quickly. "We did everything in a hurry," Lora says. "We knew there would be other people who wanted to do it -- people with real money and a real budget. We said to ourselves, we have the circulation people, the press people, editorial. We already have the best part of a newspaper. We have the humans."

Not surprisingly, the Daily Sun outsources to a commercial printer -- but the paper is actually printed on that business' presses by Daily Sun pressmen, all with long years of experience at the Star.

Since launching with a distribution of 15,000, the paid tabloid has grown to 30,000 circulation. The paper is now available all around the island, unlike the Star, and in the U.S. Virgin Island. Lora says it is reaching the influential audience of business people, politicians and mainland-born residents it wants.

"We're doing well considering the circumstances," Lora says. But advertising, she concedes, remains a problem. A big problem, from what Lourdes Lugo-Ortiz can see when the Daily Sun lands on her doorstep.

"I get it in the morning and flip it page by page saying, let me see if today they have any advertising. And a lot of days they don't have any at all," says Lugo-Ortiz, a journalism professor at the University of Puerto Rico. "In this era of crisis, when even papers that have advertising are in trouble, the possibility of surviving is very slim."

The Daily Sun's editorial quality has improved markedly since its launch, Lugo-Ortiz says, but the design is, in her opinion, dated and "does not reach the standard an elite audience expects."

But Executive Editor Lora says that audience is coming to appreciate the paper's scrupulously balanced and objective coverage, which contrasts with the sensationalism or partisanship of the island's three dailies. And after eight months every day of survival adds to the Daily Sun's appeal, she says: "We've already proven we're serious, just by being published. And now we're working hard with the advertising agencies so they will consider us for the next budget."