Tiempo Argentino - Dueños de nuestras palabras

Tiempo Argentino is written by around 100 journalists who decided to create a cooperative to recover the newspaper where they used to work and that was suddenly closed by its owners, Sergio Szpolski and Matías Garfunkel. The initial capital came from the newspaper’s readers, who bought the special edition written by the cooperative’s workers to commemorate the 40-year anniversary of the 1976 coup. Tiempo Argentino reopened as a self-managed media with a print version on Sundays and a digital newspaper from Mondays to Saturdays. It is the only national newspaper supported by its readership, which contributes 70% of the cooperative’s income. This had allowed its members to work independently and to be one of the few disagreeing voices in Argentina at a time of high media concentration. A model in Argentina, the newspaper organized a National Meeting of Recovered Newspapers in 2018 and founded Argentina’s National Network of Recovered Newspapers (RNDR), which today is comprised by 11 members. Before being recovered by its workers, the newspaper belonged to Grupo 23, a media conglomerate owned by Sergio Szpolski and Matías Garfunkel. Its business model was based on official advertising. Under the new administration and with no guarantees that they would make easy money, the owners decided to strip the company’s assets. The cooperative’s members have filed charges against them.