Daily Sun weathers first year

Jose Alvarado Vega and Michelle Kantrow Vazquez, UPAGRA/ Daily Sun Staff

01 Dec 2009

The Guild Reporter

A year after 90 locked-out newspaper professionals showed an unexpected entrepreneurial flair by launching the Daily Sun, Puerto Rico’s only English-language daily has weathered one of the worst recessions in the island’s history. Along the way it has gained recognition and respect in a tough local media market, demonstrating that a worker’s cooperative can go head-to-head with more traditional ownership structures.

Founded by locked-out employees of the defunct San Juan Star, the Daily Sun is run by Cooperativa Prensa Unida, part of an $8.5 billion cooperative movement that operates under a break-even cooperative economic model. The daily’s employees all purchased shares in the co-op and participated in its first annual assembly earlier this year, at which they elected officers and discussed business matters.

The venture received critical backing from the Union of Journalists, Graphic Artists and Related Fields, or UPAGRA, and its parent union, TNG-CWA, as well as the League of Cooperatives, the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company, the former Cooperative Development Administration and the Small Business Administration.

Publication of the Daily Sun “is a heroic feat that should be imitated. We need more people like you,” said Melvin Carrión Rivera, head of the newly created Cooperative Development Commission of Puerto Rico.

The cooperative model has allowed the newspaper to grow in circulation and quality. Since its October 2008 launch the Daily Sun’s circulation has tripled, to 30,000 copies daily, seven days a week. Printed at Canóvanas-based Accurate Printers, the publication is distributed at more than 1,300 points of sale, including traffic lights and retail establishments in all 78 municipalities. It’s also sold in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

While the publication is young, its staff of reporters and photojournalists is experienced and, over the past year, has demonstrated its ability to pursue stories. In June, the Puerto Rico Photojournalists Association bestowed honorary mentions to photographers Francesca von Rabenau O’Reilly and Humberto Trías. Reporter Xavira Neggers earned the award for best spot news reporting from the Overseas Press Club in August. Earlier in the year, the newspaper’s economy team received a special recognition from the Small Business Administration for reporting on relevant issues to that segment.

The Daily Sun venture was also the focus of reports in the Miami Herald and Editor & Publisher earlier this year.

“We are committed to continue offering serious reporting to benefit our island, offering a real alternative to our readers and advertisers,” said Puerto Rico Daily Sun Executive Editor Marisol Lora Cruz. “I must congratulate all of the employees of the Puerto Rico Daily Sun for their effort and courage to develop this project. I am grateful to each one of them, as well as to all of the people who in one way or another have supported us during this first year,” she added.

Recently, the Daily Sun reached another milestone by launching a new web site, www.prdailysun.com, offering readers—on the island and abroad—updated information, and there’s more to come. “We are now working with the digital edition, which will give the Daily Sun and its readers, editors, reporters, photographers and advertisers a news window about Puerto Rico on a global scale,” said Daily Sun Editor Rafael Matos.