Two of Puerto Rico’s legacy newspapers say they will end print editions

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Two of Puerto Rico’s biggest newspapers announced Monday that they will end their print editions in upcoming days and pivot to digital only, joining a worldwide trend.

GFR Media, a Puerto Rican company that publishes El Nuevo Día and Primera Hora, said Monday that the decision responds to a change in consumer habits.

Sept. 24 will mark the last print edition for Primera Hora and Sept. 27 for El Nuevo Día, according to the papers.

“We continue to evolve with the Puerto Rico of the 21st century, one that today numbers more than nine million Puerto Ricans who live on the Island, in the United States, in Europe and in the rest of the world. We have always been, and will continue to be, wherever Puerto Rico is,” María Luisa Ferré Rangel, publisher of GFR Media, said in a statement.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many people would be laid off. A spokesperson for GFR Media said the company’s only comment for now was the official statement it issued.

From 2015 to 2025, Grupo Ferré Rangel, the owner of companies including GFR Media, reduced the number of unionized employees from nearly 400 to less than 100, according to the Association of Puerto Rican Journalists.

The two papers join dozens of others in the U.S. mainland that have taken similar steps or shut down completely to save money as ad revenue shrivels and consumer habits change.

Nearly 3,500 newspapers in the U.S. mainland have closed in the past two decades, leading to the elimination of more than 270,000 newspaper jobs, according to Poynter, a nonprofit media institute.

El Nuevo Día began publishing in 1970; its first front page featured stories about Joaquín Balaguer being elected president in the Dominican Republic and whether molasses for Puerto Rican rum was in short supply.

Other notable front pages include the 1984 visit of Pope John Paul II to Puerto Rico — the first pope to visit the U.S. territory — and the 1986 deaths of dozens of people in a hotel fire.

More recent historic front pages include a former Puerto Rico governor announcing in 2015 that the island’s more than $70 billion public debt was unpayable, and the 2019 resignation of former Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló following massive protests.

In 2019, El Nuevo Día published its front page in English — the only time it’s ever done so. The headline read: “Mr. President: Your Numbers are Fake” alongside a picture of U.S. President Donald Trump. The story was about the amount of federal funds Puerto Rico had received after Hurricane Maria pummeled the island in 2017 as a powerful Category 4 storm, with an estimated 3,000 people dying in the sweltering aftermath.

El Nuevo Día launched its digital site in 1997, the same year that Primera Hora began publishing. Its first page featured a picture of Puerto Rican dancer Iris Chacón — scantily clad — and a story about a dengue outbreak.

El Nuevo Día said that its digital version has more than 3.4 million unique monthly users, and Primera Hora more than 2.8 million.

El Nuevo Día recently launched a digital news program via a video-podcast format, and the paper said it also will launch a news analysis program next month via the same format that will focus on the week’s top story.