The Press: Back in Circulation

In the press room of Buenos Aires' La Prensa, Editor-Publisher Alberto Gainza Paz last week started the presses rolling out the first edition of his famed newspaper since he regained it from the government. The issue set a new La Prensa pressrun record of 840,000 copies (previous high: 740,000) as Argentines snapped up copies as historic souvenirs.

Gainza Paz had swept his staff clean of those who went on writing and editing during the five years the paper was under the Perón regime. The first issue, which ran 24 pages, and had to ration advertising space, showed the paper's new look: cleaner headline type, larger body type, news instead of classified ads on the front page. Most stories were well and tightly written. But La Prensa's triumphant return won no cheers from Buenos Aires' nine other dailies. Even with its planned circulation of 300,000, La Prensa's daily newsprint quota of 33 tons will be fully one-half again as large as that of the next biggest paper. Seven of the city's papers were subsidized by propaganda-conscious Perón. Since his fall, one has folded and all the others have been losing money. With La Prensa back and likely to thrive, they expect to lose even more.