Introduction

Innovations in Journalism Beyond Western Countries

Like all human activity , journalism reflects the characteristics of each place . Despite the globalization process that homogenized many fundamentals, skills, and tools of the media worldwide over the last century, today it is easy to detect peculiarities in the journalism practiced in each territory. In some cases, the media system of a place distinguishes itself by the attention paid to certain topics that, in other latitudes, do not arise any interest at all. In other cases, the differences come from the professional routines applied by the journalists, the technologies they use, or even the underlying values that guide their news work. If examined in detail, beyond their apparent homogeneity, then professional journalism cultures hide many subtle differences on a global scale (Hanitzsch et al. 2011).

In fact, singularities are often easier to detect than common ground. Determining the lowest common denominator of the media system in a region is usually harder than analyzing the particularities of the specific media brands. Needless to say, the larger the territory, the greater the difficulty.

This book meets this challenge. It analyzes the particularities of digital and data journalism in Latin America, a very vast and diverse territory. This region refers to twenty of the thirty-four countries located in South and Central America, as well as the Caribbean, those countries where Spanish or Portuguese languages are predominantly spoken: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. To complete the list of Latin American countries, French Guiana should also be included since this is an overseas department of France where a language of Latin roots, French, is spoken. Nevertheless, due to its specificity and small population, this country won’t be considered in this book. All in all, Latin America is a territory that covers almost 18 million square kilometers; the twenty Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries have an aggregate population of more than 633 million inhabitants, around 8% of the world population (UN 2019). Despite their common language roots, these countries have very different cultural characteristics. And this diversity extends also to their media systems.

Despite having been the subject of several monographic studies in recent years (Guerrero and Márquez-Ramírez 2014; Salaverría 2016; Borges-Rey 2019; Ramírez Plascencia et al. 2020), the patterns of the Latin American media sphere, digital or otherwise, remain less studied than other regions of the world. The reasons for this scarcity of regional studies do not seem to be very different from those affecting the rest of the countries of the Global South, a recently coined term used to label the countries located on one side of the underlying global North-South divide, and that substitutes more loaded terms like “developing countries” or, more specifically, “third world” (Rigg 2007).

Multiple external factors, mainly political and economic, have contributed to the relative lack of academic studies on the patterns of journalism in Latin America. Despite political initiatives such as the Southern Common Market, a free trade agreement between several Latin American governments in force since 1991, the region suffers from deep political and economic divisions that translate, among other things, into the lack of solid statistical references around to the media sector. Researching media in Latin America comes, indeed, with a daunting lack of comparable data across countries. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of the Latin American academic researchers on Communication and Media have limited themselves to exploring media phenomena in their respective countries, or even smaller territories, paying relatively little attention to transnational phenomena from a comparative perspective (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos 2002).

There are, however, some such studies. Latin American media system has been described as that of “captured liberalism” (Guerrero 2014); that is, a system that, in theory, allows open competition, but where, in fact, many hidden rules limit media actors’ freedom. In this system, although private commercial media organizations predominate over those owned by the state, there is a limited margin for the watchdog role of journalism due to the economic and political interests of the legacy media companies. Following the market model of the US, the Latin American media system is certainly characterized by a preeminence of commercial television, with minimal development of public radio and television (Fox and Waisbord 2002).

With regard to the printed press, family publishing groups prevail, which often own horizontal business structures, with interests in other highly profitable economic sectors (banking, construction, farming, among others) and not infrequently even in politics. In a highly deregulated market, governments exercise political control over the media through a system of selective advertising investments and legal regulations that tend to reward friends and penalize the ideological adversaries. In this context, over the last few years, there has been the birth of a new set of media brands on the Internet, most of them digital-native publications, that, with the economic aid of international foundations, have begun to challenge the status quo of the media markets in many Latin American countries (Harlow and Salaverría 2016; Salaverría et al. 2019). So far, however, the impact of these new entrants in the market and public opinion is limited.

The rise of digital-native media represents one of the most recent transformations of journalism in Latin America. But it is not the only one. With greater or lesser intensity, in all the twenty countries of the region, novelties are detected in the ways of practicing journalism. These professional routines depend on each country on the uneven level of democratic freedoms, economic inequalities, and, in some cases, violence against journalists. According to the Inter-American Press Association, between 1987 and 2020, more than 600 journalists were murdered in Latin America as a result of violence, accounting for more than 20 murders a year in the last decade (IAPA 2020). In spite of these pressures and constraints, journalism continues its transformation in Latin America, as it does in the rest of the Global South. As a result, the Latin American region has become a laboratory of interesting ideas and initiatives that shed light on how to confront the problems suffered by the media worldwide.

Global South: A Source of Inspiration for Western Societies

De-Westernization of Journalism

Although globalization trends have homogenized the media over the decades, this process has not totally blurred some specificities of the news media ecosystems. As a consequence, while Western media has been questioning many long-standing professional rules, norms, and routines, journalism in the Global South has paved its own way, producing a more complex reality that reveals a dichotomy between South and North. This separation between these two regions has existed long before the advent of the Internet and computers, but it has gained increasing popularity with globalization. This movement to turn down borders became more evident in the 1990s when different phenomena took place at the same time: (1) the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, (2) the advent of the Internet and several large-scale disruptions in the field of information and communication technologies, (3) integration of deregulated markets, thanks to the growing use of these technologies, (4) the exploitation of these advances to reduce business costs and risks that helped countries to establish international trade agreements and international laws that were almost unthinkable before, and (5) a major flux of people and money between continents (Flew 2020; Van Der Hoeven 2015).

Globalization is, indeed, a multifaceted and complex phenomenon that does not reach equally to all global actors. In fact, the lack of technological capabilities to promote innovation has been an essential conditioning factor that has limited an equal diffusion worldwide of the technology, research, and development, thus restricting the concrete growth opportunities of the least favored countries (Janus et al. 2015). While in the Global South many countries still struggle to jump on the wave of Information Society, Northern countries have been navigating the waters of innovation and technology disruption for decades.

The globalization phenomenon has a high influence on the fields of the media industry and its academic research. Historically, the Western academic community has led research in this field and has retained great authority in establishing the foundations of journalism practice (Boyd-Barrett 2014), as the “[b]orders are porous, and journalistic cultures have always traveled across geographic boundaries” (Hanitzsch et al. 2019a, p. 11). This Western dominance of journalism theories is reinforced by the fact that Western media companies set up the standards that journalists from other regions must follow. Hence, ideological implications have resulted in an understanding that the journalistic norms and cultures of the North should be “catch up” by the developing and transitional countries in the South, thus perpetuating the dominance of more developed democracies (Hanitzsch 2009).

In spite of this Western dominance, journalism remains very diverse globally. Both Western media organizations and scholars enjoy generally better resources, which give them a competitive advantage to preserve their professional and academic leadership. This situation makes it difficult for the media practitioners and scholars of countries in the Global South to spread their specific cultures of journalism. In front of this one-sided approach, this book expands this theoretical discussion by providing further knowledge about the Global South, more specifically in Latin America.

Historically, many countries in the Global South have been vulnerable and have suffered from poverty, inequality, and exclusion, facing an unbalanced relationship with the Global North that has its roots in the colonialism era. That unequal relationship has also resulted in less permeability to globalized journalistic models. This relative isolation of the journalism of Southern countries has had as one of its consequences better preservation of their own features, with a lesser degree of homogeneity. Therefore, no single model of journalism can be found in the countries of the Global South (Hanitzsch et al. 2019b). The diversity of journalism cultures and identities is usually greater in the Global South.

In the Western world, mainly in the US and European countries, journalism is conceived as the “Fourth Estate.” According to this notion, the role of the media is to closely monitor and control the powers, in order to prevent their potential abuses (Carroll 2020; Carson 2019). Also, journalism plays a pivotal role in guaranteeing democracy, as it provides key information for the everyday life of citizens, thus creating public opinion (Jensen 2010). However, these roles of journalism as agents of change and watchdog are emblematic, once different societies do not have a shared understanding of this system of checks and balances on the government’s powers—legislative, executive, and judicial branches (Hanitzsch et al. 2019a).

Therefore, this does not represent the dominant model of journalism in the world for two main reasons: first, because not all countries enjoy the Montesquieuan separation of three branches of power; second, because the number of people exposed to Western media—and US journalism, in particular—is significantly less than the population reached by, say, the Chinese press, a country with its own specific culture and rules. In Asia, the values shared by journalists “stress aspects of collective harmony and social stability, recommending a constructive and collaborative role to journalists to help authorities bring about national unity, economic growth, and social development” (Hanitzsch et al. 2019b, p. 42). This socially concerted effort to achieve social and economic development, as a value of freedom-with-responsibility, is not commonly found in the North (Massey and Chang 2002). Instead, Western democracies have promoted their idea of journalism as a watchdog in the service of society, a model that has also permeated the South (Waisbord 2000). Between these two models, over the last few years, scholars have attempted to de-Westernizing and decentering journalism theories, by exploring the multiplicity of journalistic cultures throughout the world (Grüne and Ulrich 2012; Waisbord and Mellado 2014).

In the same vein, research has shown that a new wave of Latin American journalists rejects the neutrality and objectivity in news reporting (Harlow and Salaverría 2016), a core value that is commonly deployed in the US (Tuchman 1972). Other characteristics have been embraced in the journalistic culture of the region, such as “traditional norms of independence and fact-based truth-telling” (Hanitzsch et al. 2019b, p. 27). Also, in other Southern countries, like those of the Middle East and Africa, journalists suffer from regulatory and legal uncertainties that limit the extension of their work. Thus, these professionals need to have a certain degree of care and moral code specific to these situations, with a greater risk to suffer some type of abuse.

Therefore, the journalistic cultures in the Global South have no single model and present a series of features that set them apart from the journalism practiced in Western democracies. Adapting to critical situations, ranging from political disincentives to the media sector to violence against journalists and the press, the Global South offers a driving force for its remarkable prosperity, despite the challenges and hurdles. In fact, the news media is still expanding in many countries of the Global South (Hanusch et al. 2019).

This book proposes to view news media, particularly in Latin America, as an open set of practices intertwined in the evolution of technology. Despite the technologically deterministic pessimism that was perceived by journalists in the region (Harlow and Salaverría 2016), much has evolved in Latin American journalism over the past decade. In the next sections, we will discuss the transformation of the Latin American news media ecosystem and how it has shaped the industry despite local differences.

Latin America: From Colonies to Political Clientelism

A Not-So-Distant Past

Latin America is a vibrant , multicultural region, with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of 10.5 trillion USD, as of 2020 (The World Bank 2020). The region is composed of a group of twenty countries that stretch from Tijuana (Mexico) to Ushuaia in Argentine Patagonia, but the importance of Latin America in the world extends beyond its borders (Salaverría et al. 2019). The region is globally known for its populous megacities, such as São Paulo and Mexico City, which drive the economic growth of the region. At the same time, it is home to some of the best-preserved natural forests of the world, such as those of Central America and, especially, the Amazon. As regards the population, besides the 633 million who live in the region, uncounted millions of expats are living abroad, thus exporting their culture to the world (Reyes and Sawyer 2019).

However, much of the history of modern Latin America is built on an invasion “from Europe, and the subsequent 500 years have been characterized by conditions that were not always conducive to economic growth” (Reyes and Sawyer 2019, p. xiii). This past colonization brought to the region a high level of inequality that became a cruel indicator today, slowing down the development of the Latin American countries. These characteristics can also be found in the media systems of the region. Historically, Latin America became marked by arbitrary and uneven enforcement of media regulation that in most cases enabled media concentration instead of restricting it (Márquez-Ramírez and Guerrero 2014).

Also, the wealth disparity and conflictive process of political democratization have historically influenced the Latin American media and cultural industries. In particular, this has connections and parallels in the political development of the colonizers in the region. Southern Europe, in particular Portugal and Spain, has suffered from liberal democratic and authoritarian traditions that remained throughout most of the twentieth century. These historical, colonial, and cultural ties with most Latin American countries found narratives that specifically characterized the news media description of “low levels of newspaper circulation, a tradition of advocacy reporting, instrumentalization of privately-owned media, politicization of public broadcasting and broadcast regulation, and limited development of journalism as an autonomous profession” (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos 2002, pp. 176–177) in a similar fashion to Southern European countries.

In fact, the structural conditions of the post-colonial past in Latin America left the region to a power structure that is controlled by elites and that is based on some ideology and norms, contributing to their further marginalization of the minority or less powerful groups (which represents a great part of the population). Thus, low levels of literacy among the population echo the potential readership to an educated urban minority (Márquez-Ramírez 2014). This historical structure gave rise to clientelism, which can be described by these “relationships that tend to undercut the development of horizontally organized mass political parties, particularly those representing the working class” (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos 2002, p. 176). This clientelism exists in every society to some degree, but in Latin America is becoming increasingly evident.

Based on clientelism, the State takes a clear position toward deregulated news media and promoted liberal market reforms that were common in Latin America in the 1990s, showing how the political system is intertwined with the media system. In this way, the conservative media elite find ways to perform undue interference in favor of media groups. A clear example of this is Globo in Brazil, which built a media power through the influence of political institutions that fostered the idea that private media was perceived as democratic (Ganter and Paulino 2020; Kucinski 1991). Similarly, other media conglomerates have surfed these political decisions to carve out empires in their respective countries: Grupo Televisa in Mexico, Grupo Cisneros-Venevisión in Venezuela, or Grupo Clarín in Argentina.

Furthermore, this political parallelism in the media is high, due to ideological influences of government or political entities in the press, using the apparatus of the State for it. Thus, commentary and partisan opinions are commonly found in journalistic pieces. Also, the practitioners have a low level of professionalization, even though tertiary education is gaining an increasing focus in the South, such as in Africa and parts of Latin America (Hanusch et al. 2019; Skjerdal 2012). Even some countries are following this Western trend in which tertiary education in journalism has not become necessary to work in the industry.

Media Systems in Latin America

A Set of Media Systems

The recent transformations in the region’s political realm may have contributed to a deepening journalism institutional and economic crisis, but the impacts are still to be entirely unfolded. In this new wave of political and social polarization, journalism and news workers have become society’s enemies. On the one hand, according to some authors, media messages may be to blame for the escalation of tone (see Prior 2013), while others add social media to this cauldron (see Tucker and Catalini 2018). On the other hand, besides direct attacking messages toward media and journalists, a change in the media ownership’s landscape as experienced for instance in Venezuela (Moleiro 2018)—where the State increases its participation and runs the ecosystem with iron hands—can significantly jeopardize press freedom in the region and ultimately the entire media system.

To understand this turn, let’s take one step back. The region has experienced a wave of progressive governments and leaders between the late 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, due to neoliberalism’s collapse (Coutinho 2006). However, as Coutinho (2006) also argues, this movement to the left was much more heterogeneous in comparison to the previous one just one decade before. This heterogeneity has deepened the differences between the democracies in the region, thus, making it more difficult to unite analysis.

Nevertheless, those were the governments and leaders that started a very dangerous movement toward the regulation of the media market. The regulation per se is not bad, but the decisions initiated by some of those governments were not a step forward toward the democratization of the ecosystem and public access to information (Guerrero and Márquez-Ramírez 2014). On the contrary, those regimes have shown much more appetite to increase discrepancies. However, we must acknowledge that there is a significant difference when it comes to the progressivists’ reforms proposal and criticism and the new surge in the media antagonism by the new autocracies in Latin America. The former being responsible for enticing media ecology plurality and the latter for tearing away any opposition.

In this context, on the verge of a turn, as argued by Guerrero and Márquez-Ramírez (2014), the main characteristics of the media systems in the region remain unchanged: media ownership concentration and Stated intervention. This comes from a critical analysis of the tradition of comparative Media Systems. In one of the most important works regarding the topic, published by Mancini and Hallin in the early years of the 2000s, they argue that the following main dimensions should be used when comparing media systems:

(1) the development of media markets, with particular emphasis on the strong or weak development of a mass-circulation press; (2) political parallelism; that is, the degree and nature of the links between the media and political parties or, more broadly, the extent to which the media system reflects the major political divisions in society; (3) the development of journalistic professionalism; and (4) the degree and nature of state intervention in the media system. (Hallin and Mancini 2004, p. 21)

These dimensions have helped many scholars around the globe to draw upon a significant body of information and analysis (De Albuquerque 2011; Dias 2019; Mellado and Lagos 2013); however, the realities have encompassed only Western consolidated democracies, which do not reflect the complexity of regions, such as Latin America. Taking the “political parallelism,” for instance, Hallin and Mancini (2004) argue that the level of parallelism between media and political powers would be connected to the commercialization of the media and the professionalization of journalism. However, the most prominent point of discussion in Latin America is the tandem between the market and the State in Latin America, unlike the liberal established democracies. In fact, media systems in Latin America are not only commercially funded but also politically instrumentalized (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos 2002).

Moreover, as Mellado and Lagos (2013) argue, the State regulation as a restriction in media liberties is a very Westernized assumption that just takes into account press freedom existing only in a liberal market and private oriented. According to the authors, this might not be the reality in many of the countries around the globe, since many of them do not undergo the same market development (de Albuquerque 2013). Besides that, such a level of parallelism does not happen in the context of contested and collapsing media systems.

De Albuquerque (2013) alerts to the lack of political parallelism in many countries:

Many societies do not have both competitive political systems and stable patterns of relationship between media and politics, some have neither. In these societies, the connection between media and politics can assume features different from those commonly identified in the West. (p. 747)

The author refers to contexts in non-Western countries. In South America, where the relationship between the political class and the media is one of distrust, the argument is even more evident. The region experiences a historical and constant exchange of modus operandi in authoritarian and democratic regimes in relation to the press, therefore, lacking stability. Instead of repression and persecution—that is also used—the different regimes in the region have optioned for a “softer” power control over economic means and “confluence of interests” of the media.

However, during the beginning of the twenty-first century, Latin America approached a more (neo-)liberal discourse to strengthen the plurality and competition. In association with editorial and financial autonomies, these arguments came only to reinforce the benefits to the largest media conglomerates that still dominated the region. In Brazil and Mexico, Grupo Globo and Televisa, respectively, are still securing a dominant position in their respective markets (Fox and Waisbord 2002).

Again, the traditional comparative media systems theory does not offer enough substance to analyze the contexts of the Latin American countries, but it gives food for thought and especially shows us that is time to untie these strings that have been holding back the development of a theoretical framework that is grounded empirically and epistemologically on the non-Western experiences.

Therefore, in this book, we propose a view of the media system in Latin America in particular, not its discordance with global media trends, but rather—and most importantly—as a political discourse inserted in specific contexts within the region.

State and Criminal Violence in Latin America

Limiting the Freedom of Speech and Access to Information

A mere description of the laws and policies that concern the media industry in Latin America would be of little help to grasp the context wherein these organizations operate. In fact, the scenario in the region is complex with a wide range of players holding conflicting interests. Furthermore, the region suffers from a development process that has been closely linked to studies on social structure and stratification. The precarious circumstances found in this region differ from the Western democracies. While in the North, the precarity is characterized by redundancy, in the South, it emerges mainly in “forms of censorship, ‘clientism’ or the lasting effects of colonialism present within these media systems” (Matthews and Onyemaobi 2020, p. 3). Nevertheless, low salaries and layoffs are also a problem in the Global South.

These were determinants of the patterns, which would follow the development process in Latin America that was fed by violence and fear (Faletto 1993). In reality, the violence is so representative that no other region knows higher homicide rates nor has such a variety of violence as Latin America. And, unfortunately, it takes all shapes and forms: guerilla movements, civil wars, bloody revolutions, brutal dictatorships, political conflicts and interference, domestic violence, and criminal violence (Imbusch et al. 2011).

Despite this violence has always happened since colonization, these increasing scenes of crime that have turned into violence-prone continent emerged in the 1980s. This period has opened decades of independence of the countries in the region that has created fragmented societies with limited state capacities. This independence followed the aspects of the colonial heritage by establishing authoritarian governments and dictatorships. This culminated in a series of political and socio-economic changes that affected the access to information (Faletto 1993; Imbusch et al. 2011). In Chap. 4, a further discussion shows how it has delayed the process of adoption of freedom of information laws, including some countries still not having one, such as Bolivia and Costa Rica. Thus, this has yet imposed a threat to data-driven information in the region.

Less Peaceful and Press Freedom

Most of the countries in the region have surely made it abundantly clear that violence is a long-term and everyday problem in Latin America. As violence is tied together with problems of development and underdevelopment, the situation is deteriorating more. In a report published by the Institute for Economics & Peace (2020), South America had the largest deterioration in the peace and security environment, followed by Central America and the Caribbean region. The situation is highly unfavorable that no South American country is ranked higher than 35th on the index, where the first positions belong to the most peaceful countries. Yet, six of these countries showed a deterioration concerning the previous year, namely, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru.

A similar situation happened in the northern part of Latin America. Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, and Panama have also reduced their peacefulness level. The situation is very complex in Nicaragua, which together with Venezuela were the countries that have the largest fall in the peacefulness of any country. These countries are led by populist governments that have introduced legislation hinting at authoritarianism. Similarly, Brazil and Mexico, among the highly modernized countries of Latin America, brought to power anti-establishment leaders as voters turned against the status quo.

These threads are an important threat to press freedom in Latin America, where public service media is not strong. A study from European Broadcasting Union (2016) showed that countries that have a strong public service orientation have a higher degree of press freedom, less corruption, and lower levels of right-wing extremists in the power than those without public service media (Freedman 2018). Cuba and Venezuela indeed ranked lower than the rest of the countries in the region (a very serious situation), where left-wing authoritarian rule is currently in place. However, Honduras and Mexico are also in difficult situations, showing the risks that Latin American news workers suffer. Violations of freedom of information take many different forms in the region, such as corruption, impunity, cyber-surveillance, and government threats.

Furthermore, the economics of media production in these countries suffer from impacts of regulation and deregulation of media systems that affect their autonomy, resulting in more precarious work conditions for news workers. These forms of control and ownership are responsible for maintaining these situations. Therefore, journalists suffer from constant stress at work that limits their ability to perform a fourth estate (Matthews and Onyemaobi 2020).

Changes in the media landscape that increased competition is helping to drive barriers down. This evolution from a legacy publisher in the hands of a few to small digital native media outlets that support independent investigative journalism in Latin America became essential to this transformation.

From Legacy to Digital: Finding New Ways

Back to Basics

One of the most outstanding characteristics of emerging journalism in Latin America is that much innovation is carried out by secondary players in the media market. Of course, most of the newspaper business is still in the hands of the large media corporations, especially the large television networks, such as Rede Globo (Brazil) and Televisa (Mexico). The newspapers of record in the region, with titles often centuries-old, also maintain a notable influence on public opinion in their respective countries, despite a steep decline in their circulation and advertising sales, which has resulted in a serious economic crisis and cut-offs in their publishing companies. Due to this decline, many of these media have laid off trained professionals with a long career. In many countries in the region, these journalists have undertaken digital projects that, in some cases, have already achieved considerable consolidation.

In 2017, the Observatorio de Nuevos Medios (New Media Observatory; www.nuevosmedios.es) listed a comprehensive directory of digital native media in Latin America, accounting for 875 digital-native publications in the 19 Spanish-speaking countries of the region; publications from Brazil were not counted. Over the last few years, of course, not all of these digital-native media have succeeded; just a few of them have reached a reasonable degree of consolidation and recognition. However, at the beginning of the 2020s, in all the Latin American countries, digital native media outlets can be found, some of which are thriving and have achieved remarkable longevity and influence (Salaverría et al. 2019; Rodríguez-Hidalgo et al. 2020).

What characterizes the digital native media that are being consolidated? It could be summed up in three words: back to basics.

In effect, these media outlets are committed to classic journalistic values, which place independence ahead of business (Higgins Joyce 2018). In fact, these media organizations are often non-profit projects, where the surpluses, if any, are reinvested in improving the organization and hiring more journalists (Arrieta-Majul and Velez-Ocampo 2020). Also, the news topics selected by these digital-native media suppose, to some degree, a return to the origins. Instead of concentrating news publishing on popular and soft topics, the prevailing model in the more commercially oriented media, digital-native media opt for an agenda of serious and alternative news topics, often forgotten by legacy media (Harlow and Salaverría 2016; Zuluaga Trujillo and Gómez Montero 2019). Digital-native media also tend to be more open to exploring emerging journalistic formulas, such as data journalism or fact-checking. They are also very interested in fostering their transnational news use (Higgins Joyce and Harlow 2020).

To this recovery of classical values, they add greater interest to technological experimentation (García-Perdomo and Magaña 2020). In the context of economic strains, these media usually implement free and open-source technological solutions as a cost-cutting measure. However, besides controlling the expenditures, this measure results also in a faster adaptation to technological changes in the market, the pace of which has accelerated in recent years.

With few exceptions, they are media with niche audiences, which do not compete in scope with the large commercial media. However, their journalistic influence in their respective news markets is growing.

All these features make digital native media a key type of media organization to understand the evolution of journalistic cultures in Latin America. These media start-ups have made a virtue of necessity: the lack of resources has pushed them to explore innovative ways of doing quality journalism. Thus, they are driving journalism toward new horizons.

As shown in the following chapters, this subtle but unstoppable transformation of news work implies, first of all, a new praxeology—that is, a new approach to the practice of journalism and its professional routines (Mesquita and Fernandes 2021). It also involves the development of innovative business models to create sustainable quality journalism on digital platforms (De Lima-Santos and Mesquita 2021a), the strategic use of data journalism (De Lima-Santos and Mesquita 2021b) as well as the web metrics (Corzo and Salaverría 2021) to expanding news coverage, the exploitation of user-generated content in news sites (Gruszynski Sanseverino and Carpes 2021), and the analysis of emerging news consumption patterns through social media and messaging applications (Carpes and Gruszynski Sanseverino 2021). All these specific aspects are analyzed in the forthcoming pages, which are rounded with a prospective assessment of the future challenges for the Latin American news industry (De Lima-Santos and Mesquita 2021c). The overall goal is to provide an up-to-date assessment of the solutions taken, as well as a reflection about the threats and pending challenges for the Latin American digital media and, as a matter of fact, for journalism in the Global South.