The News
Monday 18 of March 2024

The News Celebrates 66th Anniversary


The News was founded by Rómulo 0'Farril, Sr.,photo: Flickr
The News was founded by Rómulo 0'Farril, Sr.,photo: Flickr
The News was founded on July 4, 1950

The News was founded on July 4, 1950, and its conception has always been closely linked to the history of the U.S. community in Mexico.

Back in the late 1940s, when Mexico and the rest of the globe were still recovering from a devastating world war and when rehabilitation therapy and the use of prosthetic limbs were still in their infancy, Don Rómulo O’Farrill Silva, the owner of Grupo Novedades, the country’s then-largest media conglomerate and Mexico’s first private television channel concession, suffered a tragic accident in which he lost a leg.

Fortunately, through the help of a friend in the U.S. Embassy, O’Farrill was able to travel to Atlanta, Georgia, where he received several months of intense treatment and a state-of-the-art prosthetic leg.

O’Farrill was so indebted to his American friend that he decided in 1950, on the anniversary of the U.S. Independence, to return the favor by establishing a small English-language newspaper to serve the growing international community here.

The first daily English-language newspaper in all of Mexico began operations on July 4, 1950, and its first edition was published the following day.

At that time, the paper was essentially a condensation and translation of stories from Grupo Novedades’ other publications.

But over the years, that newspaper, The Mexico City News, or The News, for short, began to hire its own reporters and staff and eventually gained global recognition as the largest and most important English-language daily in the Latin American continent.

However, the paper eventually grew to have a peak circulation of about 70,000.

After Don Rómulo’s death in 1981, his eldest son, Don Rómulo O’Farrill Jr., took over the conglomerate’s operations, including those of The News.

When Don Rómulo O’Farrill Jr. retired and closed most of his media empire at the start of 2001, The News also closed,  after 52 years of nonstop service to the English-speaking community of Mexico.

But six years later, Don Rómulo Jr.’s grandson, Victor Hugo O’Farrill Toscano, reopened the paper with many of the same staff and writers that had worked under his now-late grandfather.

The new The News soon earned international acclaim and awards for its daring and progressive design and journalistic style.

Two years year, the surviving O’Farrill sold the newspaper to the esteemed Maccise family, owners of the prestigious Grupo MAC multimedia group that is now known as Grupo Capital and which includes Cambio magazine, Capital, Estadio, Green TV, TV Efecto and Radio Capital, among others.

For the last eight years, Don Anuar Maccise Dib and his family have helped to steer the paper into a new era of journalistic quality and media excellence, with the support of Grupo Capital’s other eminent publications and their vast infrastructure.

Today, The News celebrates its 66th anniversary of publication — first in print and now electronically — and all of us at the paper congratulate and express our thanks to the newspaper’s founders, owners, staff, contributors and readers.

Happy birthday, The News, you were born on the Fourth of July!

THE NEWS