In the domain of the printed press, publishers dedicated to producing magazines have closed down, leaving fewer actors in the market. Among these actors, we can highlight independent projects that diversify the informative landscape. For instance, The Clinic is an exceptional case for the formats it offers, including combinations of interviews, narrative journalism, and high-quality investigations along with humorous content like jokes, caricatures, and memes discussing current political events.
El Mercurio SAP is the main actors in the domain of the printed press. El Mercurio newspaper includes several specific content supplements. Some are published daily, and give coverage to economics and international affairs, alongside other supplements published on weekends, which dwell deeper into topics such as culture, interviews, and long-form political reporting. In addition, they also publish several magazines on diverse topics exclusive to subscribers like current events, long-form journalism, decoration, women, and traveling. However, in 2020, to decrease costs, the magazines have been adapted into supplements inside the newspaper. In 2019, the newspaper implemented a paywall on its website, providing access to a digital version of the printed edition and some exclusive content, such as a newsletter. Additionally, the company has an evening newspaper, a tabloid, and the largest network of regional newspapers in the country, as well as owning other products such as FM radio stations and an informative web outlet, Emol, which functions as a parallel newsroom and presents news, audiovisual content, services, and multimedia specials.
Meanwhile, the Copesa group in 2021 closed several print products and reduced the circulation of its main newspaper La Tercera to weekends and only in two of the country regions: Metropolitan and Valparaíso. However, it is propelling a large variety of digital products. Under the brand La Tercera, it includes sub-brands offering quality articles on evening news, reporting, in-depth interviews, and columns. They are also known to develop more niche products. For example, they have a women-targeted outlet, a website about the geek world, one about culture, a site for economic reporting, another for science, sports, and practical guides for daily life, among others. To access this content, one needs a digital subscription. They have different newsletters for each product, a daily podcast, and some audiovisual productions. Its focus on digital outlets follows the line of multiplatform media, where there are some consolidated experiences. Notable among them are the news products from Tele13, the news brand of Canal 13. This offers mobile online transmission, integrating content from radio and television. Additionally, Pauta.cl, a project born out of a multimedia logic, with an FM radio channel as the main axis for its content, is also transmitted in an audiovisual format. This format is privileged for some interview programmes. It also has a web outlet with original content, repeating what has been broadcast, alongside a daily newsletter.
It is important to distinguish between informative radio channels – which include news departments with journalists on the streets, and news shows throughout the day – and others specialising in columnists, interviews, and news analysis that include conversation panels in the mornings and evenings. The first type is offered by Cooperativa, BioBio, Agricultura, and University of Chile’s own station; all of them also have conversational spaces. Meanwhile, channels that only have columnists, interviews, and panels are offered much more widely in FM.
The Digital News Report (Fernández Medina & Núñez-Mussa, 2019) shows that 38 per cent of those surveyed listened to podcasts on a monthly basis. Within this category, notable attempts have been provided by independent initiatives such as Las Raras Podcast and Relato Nacional, which produce audio narrative chronicles.
Luksic Group, owners of Canal 13 and its radio channels, have promoted this format, first with podcasts depending directly on the stations, then to Emisor Podcasting, a platform offering more specific content. Cooperativa launched its first podcast site in 2020; this functions independently from the content broadcast on the radio station using different formats, such as documentary chronicles, not often heard in daily coverage.
Open access television offers informative content constituting 20.6 per cent of the total programming, equivalent to 9,543 hours of broadcasting (news shows compose 95% of this offering) (CNTV, 2020b). In addition to television reporting and dispatches with daily information, news shows have increasingly become more extensive, where different formats share the same airtime: columns by specialised journalists and analysts or in-depth reporting, for instance. These specific sections often have a team of professionals dedicated to its development. A similar thing happens with sections dedicated to travelling and lifestyle, with pieces that border on documentaries. On Sundays, sports sections also have their own shows. In addition, news shows present in-depth interviews, where interviewees vary from experts to relevant public figures.
In other non-fiction formats, conversation shows occupy 19 per cent of total programming, subdivided in the following formats: group conversation (34.4%), interview (32.6%), opinion (14%), services and orientation (12.5%), forum-debate (3.7%), and commentary (2.7%) (CNTV, 2020b). Morning shows are additional to these. After the 2019 protests, they shifted from entertainment to news content, with politicians, news presenters, and specialists participating in conversation panels about the topics of the daily agenda.
Cable television has two national channels (CNN Chile, 24 Horas) that offer 24/7 news and varied shows including interviews, reporting, and discussion rounds about different topics like health, sports, inclusion, economics, international issues, and so forth. Alongside, there is also a cable channel depending on Mega, which combines informative content with a variety of shows and movies.
As for web outlets, there is a large assortment of independent, university, and foundation projects offering columns, reporting, and interviews, including long-form investigative journalism. The most prestigious is the Centre for Investigative Journalism (Ciper, for the initials in Spanish), a referent for watchdog reporting. It has added to their content a section with columns written by university professors to share their academic works. Interactivity, design, and user experience, whether by time or resources, are still better achieved in media that depend on companies, such as Grupo Copesa, or in university media. One of the most relevant developments in improving diversity of news formats has been the increasing number of fact-checking projects in the country. Before 18 October 2019, there were two regular fact-checking projects, one being El Polígrafo, a section within El Mercurio, and the other being Factchecking UC, belonging to the School of Communication at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. After the protests, between university, independent, and media initiatives, there were a total of 17 projects verifying information, emerging due to the need to combat misinformation during the unrest (Núñez-Mussa, 2019).
