With a minimum of notice, two of Puerto Rico’s biggest newspapers have ceased print production, continuing only via digital media.

GFR Media’s El Nuevo Día and Primera Hora announced last Monday that they would cease print production last Thursday and today (Sunday), responding to “a change in consumer habits”.

And they have, publisher María Luisa Ferré Rangel announcing that they would “continue to evolve with the Puerto Rico of the 21st century”.

“We have always been, and will continue to be, wherever Puerto Rico is,” she said.

Associated Press quoted the Puerto Rican journalists’ union that GFR had reduced the number of unionised staff it employed from nearly 400 to less than 100 in the last ten years.

El Nuevo Día was launched in 1970, and famously broke into English in 2019 to tell Donald Trump that figures he quoted for federal funds received by Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria were “fake”. The digital site began in 1997, with Primera Hora also launched that year.

A video-podcast digital news programme is a new development, with promises to launch news analysis via the same format.