This paper is based on how the recovered factories movement, which began in Argentina in 2001, has grown over the past decade to include media companies, transcending digital inequalities and turning them into opportunities for journalists and media outlets. Just like elsewhere, the situation for journalists in Argentina is precarious, with technological barriers increasing digital inequalities and a lack of respect for workers’ rights, particularly when political processes such as changes in government lead to new economic plans and market instability. This situation of great uncertainty for the press has given rise to a movement on the increase in recent years, known as “recuperated or recovered media” or “workers’ co-ops”. Between 2016 and 2017, at least six media outlets were recuperated by their workers after being closed down or abandoned by their owners, including La Nueva Mañana, in Córdoba; El Ciudadano of Rosario; La Portada, of Esquel; and the Tiempo Argentino newspaper and online news site Infonews, both based in Buenos Aires. Tiempo Argentino is the only national newspaper supported by its readership, contributing 60% of income, which has made it one of the few independent voices of dissent in Argentina at a time of high media concentration and domination.
The Tiempo Argentino newspaper was one of the winners of the first Latin American Google News Initiative (GNI), illustrating how this movement has transcended politico-social difficulties and transformed digital inequalities into digital inclusion/opportunities. The GNI is an initiative that fosters innovation aiming to improve the sustainability of journalism in a digital era by developing open source software, so as to improve user experience on the Web and optimize internal management procedures for members. Once the software is finalized, the co-op will develop a prototype available to other self-managed media outlets in order to strengthen their membership model.
Hence, this explorative study seeks to analyze the phenomenon of the recovered media in Argentina, focusing on the experience of Tiempo Argentino as the newspaper and its workers face a new digital challenge. At the end of 2001, Argentina’s political and economic crisis was the main theme in world news coverage. At this period and in response to the economic crisis, workers seized control of many abandoned factories. The rise of these “recuperated/recovered businesses”, as they came to be called, was the subject of the documentary The Take (Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis, 2004). Although these co-ops are currently on the rise, providing a new way to empower workers, we ask ourselves what will happen in terms of digital inclusion and digital literacy when they share their experience through the GNI.
Consequently, we consider that the Tiempo Argentino newspaper is creating an unprecedented type of digital inclusion that merits in-depth research into its medium and long-term impact. As a South American country opens a new paradigm to the labor market of journalists following the Argentine Bankruptcy Law (1995, 2011) enabling workers to take over bankrupt companies, we consider it of interest to investigate the experiences of these media through that of its workers.