El Tiempo () is a Colombian newspaper founded on January 30, 1911, by Alfonso Villegas Restrepo. It is currently the newspaper with the largest circulation in Colombia and for seven years was practically the only one with national circulation, due to the crisis of its main competitor, El Espectador, which became a weekly in 2001 but returned to daily publication in 2008. El Tiempo is considered a leading newspaper in Colombia.Terror of the Black Hand (Part 1). The Irish Times, March 19, 2001 Its owner is the economic group led by the Colombian businessman Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo, who bought its share from the Planeta Group of Spain, in March 2012. Two months later, it was revealed that Sarmiento Angulo also acquired the shares of the minority shareholders: Abdón Espinosa Valderrama and the members of the Santos family. The newspaper is the foundation of the media conglomerate known as El Tiempo Casa Editorial (ETCE).
According to the 2015 General Media Study, it had readers across all its platforms, with an average of readers of the print edition, from Monday to Saturday.El Tiempo's audience continues to grow. El Tiempo, June 7, 2015 and of the Sunday edition.El Tiempo Casa Editorial's audience grows. El Tiempo, May 24, 2014
History The newspaper was founded on January 30, 1911, by Alfonso Villegas Restrepo, starting with 300 four-page copies, in octavo format. Ideologically, it aligned itself with the Republican Union (Colombia), the coalition that had brought then-President Carlos E. Restrepo to power.
Beginnings Its first offices were located in a house within Santander Park. It did not have its own printing equipment, so the newspaper was printed on the presses of the "Gaceta Republicana". A few months later, in July 1911, it moved to another building in the same park, on the side where the Gold Museum is currently located. There, it could print on its own machinery, but the page typesetting was still done manually, letter by letter, with lead type. A third move took place in March 1912, to 14th Street, near Florián Street, an area where the Bogotá Stock Exchange operated until the end of the 20th century. The new building housed the newspaper's offices, the printing workshops, and, on the upper floor, the residence of the Villegas Restrepo family.
Following the death of Carlota Restrepo de Villegas, the founder's mother, he temporarily stepped down from managing the newspaper, being replaced by Tomás Rueda Vargas. By June 1913, given the evident failure of the Republican Union and the fact that the newspaper was heavily indebted, Villegas chose to retire from politics and journalism. He sold the company to Eduardo Santos Montejo, a young official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who had been a columnist for the publication since its second edition. The value of the negotiation was five thousand pesos, which Santos paid with money from a bank loan. From issue 686, July 10, 1913,First edition of El Tiempo with Eduardo Santos as sole director and owner Eduardo Santos was listed as the sole director and owner of El Tiempo. Four years later, Santos married Lorenza Villegas, sister of the newspaper's founder.
To resolve the economic chaos left by his predecessor, Santos appointed Fabio Restrepo as manager. He stabilized the newspaper's finances, paid off its debts, and managed the newspaper for the next 36 years. In the editorial section, Enrique Santos Montejo "Calibán," brother of Eduardo Santos and founder of La Linterna in Tunja, joined the editorial pages. He began publishing his column "Dance of the Hours" on August 20, 1915, which he wrote until his death in September 1971. The arrival of Eduardo Santos to the direction of El Tiempo meant his gradual distancing from republicanism. By 1921, the newspaper proclaimed its total adherence to the ideology of the Liberal Party, which at that time was a minority in Congress and opposed to the conservatism, a group that had been hegemonically in power since 1886.
Advances in technology, format, design, and information resources continued to emerge. In 1915, it began publishing information from the Reuters news agency. Three years later, it also affiliated with the Associated Press. On May 1, 1917, the masthead with the newspaper's traditional logo was published for the first time, which, with minor variations, remains to this day. By 1918, the Linotype typesetting system was incorporated, and from July 25, 1919, El Tiempo began to be printed on a duplex rotary press. By 1920, the publication already had a circulation of more than ten thousand eight-page copies. In 1926, a second duplex press was acquired, which allowed for the printing of fifteen thousand 24-page newspapers per hour. The airline Scadta, now Avianca, first transported the edition of El Tiempo to Barranquilla by plane in 1928.
From the Opposition to the Government The disrepute of conservatism—which, after 44 consecutive years in power, went into the elections divided into two factions—and the social climate heated by violent events such as the Banana Massacre, and the Great Depression (the global economic crisis of 1929) led to the victory of the liberal candidate Enrique Olaya Herrera in 1930. One of the key factors for the victory was the influence that El Tiempo had both in the selection of the candidate and in the editorial campaign it carried out in his favor, especially considering that Olaya's debate manager was Eduardo Santos. And it was just the first step. During the four terms of the Liberal Republic (Colombia), the newspaper consolidated itself as the most powerful media outlet in shaping public opinion, not only within liberalism but also among the entire national ruling class.
During the four-year terms of Olaya Herrera and Alfonso López Pumarejo, and taking advantage of the enormous prestige he had gained with the newspaper in his work consolidating liberalism in power, Santos held several public offices, such as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Colombian Ambassador to the League of Nations, Minister Plenipotentiary to Europe, Governor of Santander, Deputy to the Cundinamarca Assembly, Representative to the Chamber, and President of the Senate. He then launched his presidential candidacy for the 1938–1942 term, leaving the direction of El Tiempo to Germán Arciniegas on February 27, 1937. Arciniegas], who in turn was replaced by Roberto García-Peña "Ayax", on April 1, 1939.First edition of El Tiempo under the direction of Roberto García-Peña Once his term as President of the Republic ended, Eduardo Santos continued to appear in the newspaper's organizational chart until his death as "Director-Owner".
From Government to Opposition For the 1946 presidential elections, the Liberal Party went to the polls divided into two factions: the official faction, with Gabriel Turbay, the candidate supported by the party director (who was Eduardo Santos himself) and therefore had the backing of El Tiempo newspaper, and the dissident sector, led by Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.Biography of Alberto Lleras Camargo Mariano Ospina Pérez, the sole Conservative candidate, won the elections, and during his term, the partisan violence between Liberals and Conservatives fully developed, the most serious event of which was the assassination of Gaitán, an event popularly known as the Bogotazo, on April 9, 1948. Due to the serious public order incidents that took place in the capital, El Tiempo, like its colleague El Espectador, ceased publication for three days.Front page of El Tiempo, April 12, 1948 That same year, the Goss rotary press was put into operation, which allowed the printing of fifteen thousand 48-page copies per hour.
The political situation continued to worsen. Ospina closed Congress, decreed a state of siege, and imposed censorship. On September 6, 1952, the offices of El Tiempo and El Espectador, the headquarters of the Liberal Party, and the residences of Alfonso López Pumarejo and Carlos Lleras Restrepo were looted and set on fire by a mob. of conservatives attending the funeral of police officers murdered in Tolima.Clave 1952 Incendio El Tiempo Its circulation had to be suspended for 48 hours, and for twelve days it was published in tabloid format, printed on borrowed equipment. People called this newspaper "El Tiempito" (Little Time) because of its small size.Editions of El Tiempo in tabloid format, in September 1952
Closure of El Tiempo and appearance of Intermedio
The press censorship, established by Ospina Pérez, and which had continued during the governments of Laureano Gómez and Roberto Urdaneta Arbeláez, intensified during the dictatorship of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. On the night of August 3, 1955, the facilities of El Tiempo were militarized and the newspaper was shut down. The pretext for the closure was a telegram that the newspaper's director, Roberto García-Peña sent a series of corrections and clarifications to Jorge Mantilla, his counterpart at El Comercio (Ecuador) in Quito, regarding a statement Rojas Pinilla had made during his visit to Ecuador, in which he attacked the Colombian liberal press, calling it liars for having claimed that some people killed in a traffic accident had actually been murdered by a group of conservative thugs called «Los pájaros» (the deceased were Emilio Correa Uribe,Los días de El Independiente. El Espectador, February 19, 2016 director of «El Diario», of Pereira, and his son).60 years ago, the closure of El Tiempo was ordered. El Tiempo, August 5, 2015
The regime ordered El Tiempo to publish a front-page apology to the President of the Republic for "unjustly offending" the government he led, since the official version, and therefore the only one permitted, was that of an accident. When El Tiempo refused to apologize, Decree 036 of August 4, 1955, was enacted, which determined the indefinite suspension of its publications. Weeks later, Rojas boasted in a speech of having been able to destroy a media outlet he considered a superstate, a parallel government, and declared that "as of August 4, 1955, the country has been notified that the Head of State is in the presidential palace and not in the newsroom of any newspaper." name="cincuentenariobis"/>
Seeing that the closure of the newspaper meant, on the one hand, an enormous economic loss, and on the other, leaving almost a thousand employees without work, Eduardo Santos decided to found the El Tiempo Publishing House, distributing part of the shares he owned with his wife among the Santos family group, Roberto García-Peña and several long-standing senior officials of the newspaper. After processing the necessary permits, it went out into the streets Intermedio, on February 21, 1956,Second edition of Intermedio. February 22, 1956 under the direction of Enrique Santos "Caliban." The logo on the masthead of the new newspaper used the same font as El Tiempo, and even the newsboys announced it as El Tiempo. The name "Intermedio" was chosen deliberately, making a veiled allusion to the fact that this situation was merely a brief pause, like an intermission in a play, and that the dictatorial regime was not going to last long. From dictator Rojas Pinilla to imprisoned mayor Samuel Moreno The caricature of "Chapete" on the cover of the first edition made this clear. An actor on stage greeted the audience, saying, "Respected audience, thank you very much. And now, a few moments of Intermedio."El Tiempo Intermediate In April 1956, eight months after the closure, Rojas offered the Santos brothers the option of resuming publication of El Tiempo, but they refused. Although censorship of Intermedio continued, it was somewhat permissive from then on.Next, Intermediate