This 1st October, El Nacional will set in motion a singular initiative, the Club El Nacional, hoping to deepen our relationship with our readers, to strengthen their feeling of belonging and their support for the journalism we practice, and to create a community of supporters of the newspaper and its editorial line that, with your help, will allow us to go on continue as we have begun: with totally free access.
This project, ripened for almost a year after having explored different initiatives of the international online press, also seeks to preserve the newspaper's freedom to the fullest, to try to lead it to become a leader of the press in Catalonia and to editorially protect our particular view of the country in the face of any external threat or advertising boycott.
We believe that the time has come to take this step, after a journalistic adventure which started in September 2015 with a blog and came to maturity in March 2016 with the appearance of the current newspaper. We want to grow by strengthening the affinity with our editorial line that exists between our readers and the paper. A greater sense of affinity and commitment so that the supporters of a newspaper like El Nacional can also contribute to keeping all our content free.
We want the community of the El Nacional Club to gather under one umbrella all the political, economic, social and public views that coincide on one point: Catalonia has earned the right to be part of the international order of countries that have had the opportunity during their history to exercise their right to self-determination in everything that means.
If Catalan society claims the right to decide on its independence, that debate cannot be silenced or criminalised. It must be an open, free and honest debate. And our aim is to offer, in the field that concerns us, the instruments to make it possible.
If Catalan society claims the right to decide on its independence, that debate cannot be silenced or criminalised
Our club model has similarities with the choice the British newspaper The Guardian went with in its day, which has also avoided models of having readers pay for the news, keeping exclusive content behind a paywall. We don't want first-class readers who can pay for the whole newspaper and second-class readers who can only read part of it.
By becoming a member or supporter of El Nacional, those who contribute will be, with their committed action, helping to keep the newspaper free for other people. It will be an individual commitment which allows for the preservation and widening of the community of readers we already have and with whom we share the desire of a free country.
Digital newspapers, which have replaced the old print papers as the leading source of news, offer a unique opportunity to overturn the Catalan media landscape which has remained substantially unchanged for decades. The new Catalonia no longer accepts that the decision center of all the tools it needs, whether political, economic or business ones, should be in Madrid and not in Barcelona. That has to be made even more visible in the world of communication too.
Because a normal country is one in which the balance and correlation of forces between different visions of society has its correspondence in the media. Together we have to make it normal that what is already happening, for example, with Catalan radio, where the stations RAC1 and Catalunya Ràdio are leaders ahead of Ser, Onda Cero and Cope, should end up happening with the digital press in Catalonia.
We want to be part of this battle, which is decisive today and will be even more decisive for the Catalunya of the future. We aim to make it so that, once and for all, the media narrative about Catalonia isn't cooked up in Madrid, nor in opposition to the interests of the Catalan people. We are determined to make normal something that hasn't been before. But we also want to explain our vision of Catalonia to Spain and the world.
We aim to make it so that, once and for all, the media narrative about Catalonia isn't cooked up in Madrid, nor in opposition to the interests of the Catalan people
The El Nacional Club will be a place of confluence for all those who trust us, stimulate us with their praise and criticism and with whom we share a vision of Catalonia. Thanks to this willingness to meet with our supporters, club members will be able to, among other things, attend regular meetings in different formats with the newspaper's journalists and collaborators, attend exclusive conferences and talks with figures from the worlds of politics, economics and culture. And also, if you wish, enjoy discounts with the club card that you will get.
Thanks to the permanent and critical support of our readers, we have acquired sufficient maturity and the necessary editorial strength for an initiative like the El Nacional Club. This is demonstrated every month by the two official ratings agencies of the digital press, OJD and Comscore, which count our audience in the three languages in which we produce the newspaper: Catalan, Spanish and English.
Among the Catalan newspapers audited by OJD, El Nacional has long maintained an unquestionable leading position with more than 7.1 million unique users in September, more than doubling our nearest pursuer. As for Comscore, which includes all the newspapers and is the main measure for advertising agencies, El Nacional in August reached 4.7 million unique users in Spain and 2.6 million in Catalonia.
For the second month in a row, El Nacional has held the fifth position in the league of newspaper websites, according to Comscore, in Catalonia, only surpassed by La Vanguardia (3.9 million), El País (3.0 million), El Periódico (2.9 million) and El Mundo (2.6 million). Following are, in order, outlets such as 20Minutos, El Confidencial, El Español, ABC, Ok Diario, Eldiario.es, Huffington Post, ARA, Nació Digital and Vilaweb.
Our audience figures cannot, therefore, be more encouraging for El Nacional, since, despite being the youngest project, we have climbed to the top
Our audience figures cannot, therefore, be more encouraging for El Nacional, since, despite being the youngest project, we have climbed to the top. But, although we are happy, it is not enough for the future. We want to continue growing, but we cannot do it alone as before. We have the ambition to reach ever more Catalans and to continue making our newspaper with its commitment and lack of complexes. And for our supporters to feel ever more satisfied. If that is so, we will have achieved our goal.
We want to protect the best values of Catalan society, which we intend to accompany in the news. An open, dynamic, creative and critical society that, with its mobilisation, its civility, its desire for freedom and its votes, made possible the referendum on 1st October 2017.