ABC (newspaper)

ABC (Spanish pronunciation: [aˈβeθe]) is a Spanish national daily newspaper. It is the second largest general-interest newspaper in Spain, number one in Madrid, and the oldest newspaper still operating in Madrid. It is also circulated in Latin America, and is considered as a newspaper of record for the exiled of Cuba and Venezuela.

ABC
Front page, 2 June 2009
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatCompact
Owner(s)Grupo Vocento
Founder(s)Don Torcuato Luca de Tena y Álvarez-Ossorio
PublisherCatalina Luca de Tena
EditorBieito Rubido Ramonde
Founded1 January 1903 (1903-01-01)
Political alignmentConservatism, Monarchism, Catholicism
LanguageSpanish
HeadquartersJuan Ignacio de Tena 7, Madrid, Spain
CountrySpain
Circulation243,154 (2011)
Websitewww.abc.es

History and profile

ABC was first published in Madrid on 1 January 1903[1][2] by Torcuato Luca de Tena y Álvarez-Ossorio.[3][4] The founding publishing house was Prensa Española, which was led by the founder of the paper, Luca de Tena.[4] The paper started as a weekly newspaper, turning daily in June 1905.[5] In 1928 ABC had two editions, one for Madrid and the other for Seville.[4][6] The latter was named ABC de Sevilla.[4]

On 20 July 1936, shortly after the Spanish Civil War began, ABC in Madrid was seized by the republican government, which changed the paper's politics to support the Republicans. The same year Blanco y Negro, a magazine, became its supplement.[7] The ABC printed in Seville was supportive of the Nationalists. In 1939 ABC in Madrid was given back to its original owners by Francisco Franco.[3] During this period the paper was one of two major dailies in the country together with La Vanguardia.[2]

In the 1990s the publisher of ABC was Editorial Española.[8] The paper later moved from its historic landmark offices in Madrid by Paseo de la Castellana, which is now a shopping mall. The paper is part of Grupo Vocento,[9][10] which also owns El Correo Español, El Diario Vasco, La Verdad and Las Provincias, among the others.[11]

In the late 1970s and 1980s ABC had close connections with first Popular Alliance and later Popular Party.[12]

ABC publishes in compact-sized stapled sheets, noticeably smaller than the loose tabloid format favoured by most Spanish dailies, including El País and El Mundo. Its cover distinctively features a full-size picture.

ABC is known for generally supporting conservative political views[13] and defending the Spanish monarchy.[14] The paper has also a right-wing stance.[15] Its director since 1983, Luis María Ansón, left the paper in 1997[8] to found another daily, La Razón, which initially catered to even more conservative readers.

Historically, it was noted in its heavy use of photography, and the front page is typically a large photo taking up to one third of the area. Recently, it has been recognized for its coverage of Spanish culture and arts.[3]

Archives

On 25 September 2009, ABC made its complete archives, dating back to 1903, available online, giving modern readers a chance to see contemporaneous news about the Spanish Civil War or Francisco Franco's death.

Circulation and readership

In February 1970 ABC had a circulation of 212,536 copies.[16] It was 178,979 copies in February 1975,[16] 171,382 copies in 1976, 145,162 copies in 1977 and 126,952 copies in 1978.[1] The circulation of the paper was 135,380 copies in February 1980.[16]

The 1993 circulation of ABC was 334,317 copies, making it the second best selling newspaper in Spain.[17][18] In 1994 it was again the second best selling newspaper in the country with a circulation of 321,571 copies.[18][19] In the period of 1995–1996 the paper had a circulation of 321,573 copies, making again it the second best-selling paper in the country.[20]

The circulation of ABC was 292,000 copies in 2001[21] and 262,874 copies in 2002.[11] The paper had a circulation of 263,000 copies in 2003, being the fourth best-selling newspaper in the country.[22][23] Based on the findings of the European Business Readership Survey ABC had 5,685 readers per issue in 2006.[24] Between June 2006 and July 2007 the daily had a circulation of 230,422 copies.[5] The 2008 circulation of the paper was 228,258 copies.[25] It was 243,154 copies between July 2010 and June 2011.[26]

References
  1. Katrin Voltmer (2006). Mass Media and Political Communication in New Democracies. Psychology Press. p. 19. ISBN 978-0-415-33779-3.
  2. Teresa Ortiz-Gómez; Agata Ignaciuk (2013). ""Pregnancy and labour cause more deaths than oral contraceptives": The debate on the pill in the Spanish press in the 1960s and 1970s". Public Understanding of Science. 24 (6): 658–671. doi:10.1177/0963662513509764. PMID 24259515. S2CID 28696508.
  3. "ABC". Encyclopædia Britannica. I: A-Ak - Bayes (15th ed.). Chicago, Illinois: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 2010. p. 14. ISBN 978-1-59339-837-8.
  4. Jacob Fox Watkins (2014). "Not Just "Franco 's Spain" - The Spanish Political Landscape During Re-Emergence Through the Pact of Madrid". Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies. 39 (1). Archived from the original on 3 February 2018. Retrieved 6 May 2015.
  5. Andrea Czepek; Melanie Hellwig; Eva Nowak (2009). Press Freedom and Pluralism in Europe: Concepts and Conditions. Intellect Books. p. 275. ISBN 978-1-84150-243-4.
  6. Gabriel Jackson (2012). Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931-1939. Princeton University Press. p. 555. ISBN 978-1-4008-2018-4.
  7. Xon de Ros; Geraldine Hazbun (2014). A Companion to Spanish Women's Studies. Boydell & Brewer Ltd. p. 195. ISBN 978-1-85566-286-5.
  8. Sandra Truscott; Maria J. Garcia (1998). "A Dictionary of Contemporary Spain" (PDF). Routledge. New York. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
  9. Andreu Casero-Ripollés; Jessica Izquierdo-Castillo (2013). "Between Decline and a New Online Business Model: The Case of the Spanish Newspaper Industry" (PDF). Journal of Media Business Studies. 10 (1): 63–78. doi:10.1080/16522354.2013.11073560. hdl:10234/92211. S2CID 73667009. Retrieved 1 December 2014.
  10. Enric Castelló; David Domingo (2005). "Spanish media facing new media: a challenge to journalists?". International Journal of Iberian Studies. 18 (3). Retrieved 3 December 2014.
  11. David Ward (2004). "A Mapping Study of Media Concentration and Ownership in Ten European Countries" (PDF). Dutch Media Authority. Retrieved 19 February 2014.
  12. Frank R. Baumgartner; Laura Chaqués Bonafont (2014). "All News is Bad News: Newspaper Coverage of Political Parties in Spain" (PDF). Political Communication. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
  13. Bogusława Dobek-Ostrowska; et al. (2010). Comparative Media Systems: European and Global Perspectives. Budapest: Central European University Press. Retrieved 1 December 2014. – via Questia (subscription required)
  14. Richard Gunther; Jose Ramon Montero; Jose Ignacio Wert (2000). "The media and politics in Spain". In Richard Gunther; Anthony Mughan (eds.). Democracy and the Media: A Comparative Perspective. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521777438. Retrieved 27 November 2014.
  15. Dan Beeton (22 July 2013). "Spanish Newspaper ABC Runs a "Completely False" Report on Venezuela, Again". CEPR. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
  16. Juan A. Giner (1983). "Journalists, Mass Media, and Public Opinion in Spain, 1938-1982". In Kenneth Maxwell (ed.). The Press and the Rebirth of Iberian Democracy. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Retrieved 25 January 2015. – via Questia (subscription required)
  17. "The Daily Press". Contenidos. Retrieved 19 February 2015.
  18. "Facts of Spain". Florida International University. Archived from the original on 21 June 2013. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  19. Jose L. Alvarez; Carmelo Mazza; Jordi Mur (October 1999). "The management publishing industry in Europe" (PDF). University of Navarra. Archived from the original (Occasional Paper No:99/4) on 30 June 2010. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
  20. Media Policy: Convergence, Concentration & Commerce. SAGE Publications. 1998. p. 7. ISBN 978-1-4462-6524-6.
  21. Adam Smith (15 November 2002). "Europe's Top Papers". campaign. Retrieved 7 February 2015.
  22. Roland Schroeder (2004). "Interactive Info Graphics in Europe-- added value to online mass media: a preliminary survey". Journalism Studies. 5 (4): 563–570. doi:10.1080/14616700412331296473. S2CID 144687383.
  23. "World Press Trends" (PDF). World Association of Newspapers. Paris. 2004. Retrieved 15 February 2015.
  24. Craig Carroll (2010). Corporate Reputation and the News Media: Agenda-setting Within Business News Coverage in Developed, Emerging, and Frontier Markets. Routledge. p. 177. ISBN 978-1-135-25244-1.
  25. Alan Albarran (2009). Handbook of Spanish Language Media. Routledge. p. 25. ISBN 978-1-135-85430-0.
  26. Figures covering July 2010 to June 2011 in Spain Archived 29 April 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Oficina de Justificación de la Difusión. Retrieved 28 January 2012.

Further reading
  • Merrill, John C. and Harold A. Fisher. The world's great dailies: profiles of fifty newspapers (1980) pp 33–36
  • ABC.es – official online version of ABC
  • The ABC – Article in English discussing ABC
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