Since the very moment on which the Listin Diario drew the line to connect both printed and digital platforms, more than a decade ago, we took more seriously the digital ecosystem, as we were quite aware that this was an inevitable and irreversible step towards changing the model of social communications.
In this same nature, the most important newspapers of the world, in particular those of Latin America, have trite the same paths for their reinvention, dropping strong investments in modern technologies that give them a better competitiveness in the digital sphere and also minimize the decline of dissemination and advertising through the printed platforms.
It’s a reality that, instead of being ignored, it’s assumed as not to be caught like the shrimp that falls asleep, oblivious to any surprise, or caught with a fully-developed cyclone already chasing them. In recent years, our attention has been focused on the weighting and balance of what reality dictates and thanks to this exercise we’ve been able to take the necessary steps to absorb the new culture that characterizes our society and respond to its challenges.
This is how, through systematic work, based on the knowledge of new technologic applications that measure the readers’ preferences, we open ourselves to a change of mentality that ensures that the convergence of platforms will result in a positive, non-traumatic transition.
Professional journalism, with its intrinsic values, was the essential tool to create public opinion and catalyze the free expression of the ideas of citizens, which is a fundamental pillar of any democratic society. Its mission can never die, not even in the current changing world of the world wide web.
Hence, in the face of the phenomenon of digital disruption, its exercise remains the same, based on the principles of truthfulness, verification, research and the confrontation of sources, which can be applied in both a printed and digital platform.
No media kills another. On the contrary, they complement each other and benefit from each other. Journalism of high-quality and depth, which now discovers new fields, is what guarantees a society the reliable inputs for discernment, decision-making and analysis, especially when the plague of fake or manipulated news is being spread through the wide ocean of social networks.
Therefore, the key to a good convergence is to preserve in all platforms of social communications that valuable set of rules and principles that serve as protective shields of the lovely freedom of speech, without which a society can’t survive.
Guided by those premises, in the Listin Diario we continue to step firmly to assume all the structural and content changes that these modern times demand, it’s a time of innovation upon innovation, which we should obey in order to maintain a lifespan of over 130 years in the highest place of preference of the Dominican press.
We are very convinced that we’re in the correct track of changes. And nothing we fear.
– Translated from Spanish by Randy Rodriguez.
Director's Thoughts 