El Español

History and foundation: what is “El Español”?

El Español, is a newspaper in Spanish digital format whose headquarters are located in Madrid. It is considered a medium with a political ideology of the center. Its director is Pedro J. Ramírez, who

had previously been co-founder and director of El Mundo and Diario 16.

Ramírez started this project after having to leave his position as director of El Mundo. He did this by investing the money from his dismissal in his new project linked to the journalistic sector. In addition, together with his daughter María Ramírez Fernández they registered the company NoHaceFaltaPapel S.L., current publishing company of the digital medium. The name of this publishing company perfectly represents the main ideal of Pedro J. Ramírez when starting the project, that is, to illustrate the idea that the death of paper is a reality and that due to the time of emergence de El Español would choose to dispense with its presence in that format. Therefore, in digital format this medium has been available since October 2015 and it continues to grow. But, like many media, El Español has also experienced rotations from its inception to the present.

David López Frías, reporter and also one of the few founders of the medium that remain in the newspaper today, tells us how the initiation project was totally different from what is known today by El Español, since this it started as a blog. This initiative was born from María Ramírez and Eduardo Suárez, who carried the journalistic line linked to an investigative newspaper, with long features. After the abandonment of these media line creators, El Español changed its route entirely under the command of Pedro Ramírez, with a new editorial line, new content or a new publication rhythm.

Regarding the sources of economic nutrition, they follow a type of private financing which they reached from the creation of an equity crowfunding campaign from the publishing company NoHaceFaltaPapel. Speaking about the size of the company, it is a company with around 50-200 employees.

El Español has a lion as a logo used as an emblem and also has a very peculiar motto: “digital newspaper, plural, free, indomitable, yours”. Audacity Partners is in charge of the management of designing this digital newspaper betting on a different and innovative touch.

In addition to being a relevant communication medium today, El Español stands out for having achieved one of the most successful crowfunding processes. This campaign began on January 10 and together with the publishing company NoHaceFaltaPapel S.L. after 10 days it already had 1,000 investors and 500,000 euros in its coffers.

A web page was set up, invest.elespanol.com, through which any natural or legal person could make an individual contribution. This had a positive impact on Spanish society and also meant a great boom in different social networks.

Finally, the campaign was closed on February 28 with a total collection of € 3,600,000 contributed by 5,624 investors.

Organization and work methodology

El Español's digital platform consists of different sections. As soon as we enter this media we can distinguish the different titles to which we have the possibility to enter to inform ourselves in greater depth: Spain, opinion, features, world, investment, science, culture, sports ... In addition, it gives you the opportunity to click about the autonomous community that interests you and read the most recent and relevant news of the moment by areas. Although the organization can be improved and the sections of this newspaper make it a unique media that stands out from the more direct competition. “Science” and “Features” stand out, two of its most successful sections in terms of visits.

One of the keys to the organization and the work methodology is the boss, Pedro J. Ramírez, the newspaper's sign of identity. There are people who read the newspaper just for him, in fact, David López acknowledges that "he has his own audience, his group of fans, people who follow the newspaper just because it is his, and that is good for El Español." Pedro, along with his second of his, Miguel Ángel Mellado, is in charge of organizing and distributing each task so that nothing is left uncovered.

Target public:

The aim of the newspaper is to achieve the maximum possible diffusion. It does not end in being a political or ideological medium or one that seeks a very specific objective. To cover all possible fields (politics, science, cooking, video games, etc.) they not only have the 90 journalists from El español. This medium makes what are called alliances with other groups to provide itself with information in exchange for visibility, publicity and money. For example, El Español has an agreement with the Vandal platform, which specializes in video games. The exchange consists of Vandal changing his address to https://vandal.elespanol.com/ in exchange for money and advertising. In this way, the specialized page becomes better known and increases its income, and the people who read this information on this website are indirectly reading El Español, so both win.

This agreement is also seen with other pages such as Cocinillas, which provides gastronomic information. These alliances are also maintained with local press in the different areas of Spain, since it is more profitable to do this than to open a branch in each area of ​​Spain. El Español prefers to ally itself with Crónica Global to obtain news about Catalonia in exchange for money and publicity and the local media also wins with this alliance. This is how they work in Spanish. In this way, it is possible to inform the media about the electoral results in Madrid and about Catalan news, but also about the fashion video game or a cooking recipe.

The change that made the difference

The organization is now very structured and works perfectly. Not for nothing are they the third digital newspaper in Spain. But this was not always so. The newspaper started as a blog and when it was already a newspaper the structure was very different. Everything was more abstract (sports was not "Sports", it was called "Podium" for example. In addition, the pace of work was much slower. David López, told how he had got to have 15 days for a feature, when now does two or three a week. He is happy with the change, because he thinks it is beneficial for the newspaper, but suggests that the best thing would be to find a middle ground. He laughs that he

has gone "from a Caribbean rhythm to a Stakhanovistic rhythm", And he believes that the key to being able to maintain consistency and success at work is to achieve a middle ground between doing a feature every 15 days and doing 3 a week, more than anything because many times they are required a rhythm that does not depend on them .

Features: the star section

El Español has the features section as one of its most important pillars. Within the medium itself, they believe that this section is one of the keys to their success and a way to differentiate themselves from other digital media. "Reportajes" has 11 journalists and is one of the largest in the medium. There were not always so many journalists. At the beginning, the section was made up of Nacho Carretero (author of the book “Fariña”), Mariangela Paone and David López Frías (our interviewee). Despite having fewer resources, the objective was similar: to create quality content, with a lot of work and time behind. The workforce increased and other big names like Andrés Lozano joined, for example, to the 11 that they are today.

In the section they work in a very organized and sacrificial way. The national territory is divided among all the reporters and from there each one looks for stories for their features in a specific area. David López Frías, for example, is in charge of the Balearic Islands and Catalonia, because he is Catalan and knows the language. These feature are carried out exhaustively and almost without time, as David himself tells us: "Unlike other media, here we do not have a week or 15 days for a feature, here we go two or three a week." He acknowledges that this rhythm is necessary, although he confesses that is exhausting: “I wake up and the first thing I do as I open my eyes is to see the events in the Balearic Islands and Catalonia. You never get to disconnect, it takes a lot of vocation. "

For the features, David says that in El Español they often do what is called a second round ("segunda vuelta" in spanish). It consists of collecting events that go unnoticed in the local press of an area and obtaining an interesting story from that. To do this, the medium spares no expense and sends its reporters to areas of interest to obtain an interesting story for readers.

In this way, a reporter from El Español has to do this in one day: he wakes up, looks at his cell phone, checks the relevant events in the area of Spain assigned to him, sends at least 10 links to the bosses (Pedro J. Ramírez and Miguel Ángel Mellado) and after the bosses confirm that the stories of those 10 possibilities are of interest, they go to work to get those features.

Financing and subscribers

In El Español they follow a type of private financing which they reached from the creation of an equity crowfunding campaign from the publishing company NoHaceFaltaPapel, current publishing company of the digital medium. The newspaper was born with a subscription model because they did not want to focus their sources of economic nutrition exclusively on advertising revenue.

In addition to being a relevant communication medium today, El Español stands out for having achieved one of the most successful crowfunding processes, it has probably been the largest amount generated by a campaign. The support of various social networks was a great turning point during the period.

The crowdfunding objective was to have even more resources to start the project, guarantee its independence and retain readers in the habit of paying for content. "El Español" news startup raised 3.1 million euros ($ 3.4 million) through crowdfunding in less than two months and 5,624 from subscribers.

The site's fundraising power can be attributed in part to the influence of its high-profile editor. Ramírez, who founded El Mundo in 1989, is known not only for making the newspaper the second-largest in Spain by circulation, but also for publishing important investigative stories, including revelations of death squads sanctioned by the socialist government in The 1990s.

Subscription

The subscription to the newspaper includes numerous benefits such as browsing without intrusive advertising with unlimited access to all content, access to the Subscriber's blog: a space reserved to publish your articles, informative newsletters with the most outstanding news of the day and the daily analysis of Pedro J. Ramírez, priority access to our forums and events ...

Profits

El Español made profits in 2019 for the first time in its history. The León de El Español Publicaciones, the publishing company of this newspaper, closed 2019 with an operating profit of 1.4 million euros, a figure that represented an increase of 532 % compared to the previous year.

Social media and SEO

El Español was born under the words of Pedro J. Ramírez on his Twitter profile, "El Español has made history before being born" and whose shareholders will mean "a before and after in journalism" because in this way "independence is assured of the new digital newspaper ".

On December 31, 2014, the Twitter account of El Español (@elespanolcom) was created.

His first tweet consisted of the link to a presentation video, in 15 hours he reached 30,000 followers, without a doubt he managed to attract the expectation of the public. On January 1, at 12 o'clock at night, they emitted the ones baptized as "12 bells of El Español."

The bulk of social media was vital during the crowdfunding campaign. It was divided between Twitter and Facebook, which are the most attractive platforms for subscribers, while YouTube was the most striking in terms of views and not in terms of attracting subscribers like the first two.

Thus, on April 23, 2015, El Español, not yet founded, reached 100,000 followers on Twitter. It currently stands at 430 thousand.

In a digital medium, social networks are fundamental, at the beginning around 2015 in El Español, social networks followed their own editorial line, which interacted a lot with users and was very close to them with a closer vocabulary. However, this did not work although the closeness, the humor or the inside of how they worked was something that was successful in those years. As a result of several changes in social networks, they ended up outsourcing the service and currently El Español does not take care of social networks but rather has a team hired for it.

"El Español" is not that it stands out in a specific social network, however the social network that is most important with respect to its organic traffic is Facebook. David tells us that Twitter is "nowhere" since the traffic that comes to a newspaper from Twitter is almost residual and even more often comes from Instagram. Therefore, there is a wrong opinion of what Twitter is and how it influences the newspapers.

"The king, no matter how badly it is now, is still Facebook."

Design

In terms of aesthetics, the format that Spanish followed around 2015 was to give the reader a

paper magazine on the screen. For many years they focused on people reading the newspaper through the tablet and that was a mistake. Now they focus on making everything more practical and functional for them and for the reader, although it may be less apparent, but they realized that this did not work and they focused on a more grateful newspaper to read through the inputs they received from the users. readers.

The importance of aesthetics in a digital medium is less than in a traditional medium, the use of paper has finally been for books, magazines, supplements and more aesthetic things. Therefore, the issue of layout and appearance has to be taken care of. In the case of digital media, they end up having their own appearance. The key in a digital medium is to make it comfortable, practical and pleasant and that the advertising banners are not invasive.

"What Spanish has taught us is that the important thing is to be functional, with related videos within reach and that reading is clear and comfortable."

David López Frías

Headlines and SEO

In "El Español" the headlines go through the filter of Pedro J. Ramírez or Miguel Ángel Mellado, who are the ones who decide. The journalists who have written the news give a proposal regarding the headline since they are the ones who know the information well, but even so the headline ends up being put by the bosses after discussing it. The headlines are a very important part that they often arrive without reservation, without being sensational and always within the law, they tend to go to the limit in the headlines and that usually works.

In "El Español" there have been problems of intrusiveness where some things have been copied from them, David tells us how exclusive features he has made, he has realized some time later that when he consulted it on the internet his piece appeared the sixth or seventh and the first was a blog that syllable your text.

"The impact of journalism is online"