Buyers Save El Vocero Newspaper From Shutdown

There will be no stopping the presses.

An investor group has agreed to purchase the struggling El Vocero newspaper in Puerto Rico out of bankruptcy with an offer valued at $1.9 million, according to documents filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Old San Juan.

The buyers, a group called Publi-Inversiones de Puerto Rico Inc., were the only qualified bidders to show up at a Nov. 22 auction held by the newspaper’s trustee. The investors were reportedly brought together by a second cousin of newspaper president Peter Miller.

The sale of the newspaper, which faced liquidation without a rescue, is expected to be finalized on Nov. 30.

In earlier court papers, newspaper attorneys warned that a shutdown of the publication, which competes with the island’s El Nuevo Dia newspaper, would leave the island’s media scene with fewer voices.

“Should El Vocero disappear, it would essentially mean that Puerto Rico would be receiving its news from only one daily newspaper, certainly not something that anyone desires,” the newspaper’s attorneys said in earlier court papers.

El Vocero publishes columns by Ricky Rosselló, a rumored aspiring political candidate whose political advocacy group is pushing for the 3.6 million-resident island to become a U.S. state.

Attorneys put El Vocero into bankruptcy on Sept. 20 after more than a decade of struggles. In court papers, newspaper officials blamed universal challenges that face the print media industry: declining advertising revenue and increasing paper and ink costs.

Last year, El Vocero became a free newspaper–a strategy that increased circulation to about 160,000 readers, according to court papers. But the newspaper has stopped using the industry’s formal circulation auditing process, which caused advertising agencies to shy away.

Advertising revenues have dropped by about 20% every year since the audits ended, according to court papers.

Founded in 1974, El Vocero grew to reach its circulation peak in the early 1990s with about 270,000 daily editions before financial troubles hit. By the time that El Vocero’s founding editor Gaspar Roca died in 2007, the newspaper was behind on its tax bill and hadn’t been paying its paper supplier on time, according to court papers.

In 2009, the newspaper’s circulation department laid off 107 union workers, triggering a National Labor Relations Board dispute that could end up costing it more than $10 million, according to court papers.

The last straw came when the union’s pension administrators asked a federal judge to force the newspaper, which employs about 280 people, to pay up on delinquent pension contributions that, at one point, had grown to more than $435,000.

Write to Katy Stech at [email protected].