An Important Update From NACLA

 

Important Update from NACLA

 

Dear Naclistas,

We write today with an important update about NACLA’s future.

Since 1966, NACLA has made it our mission to provide information for change. As we’ve long said, we bring you the overlooked, the under-reported, and the covered-up from Latin America and the Caribbean, providing information and analysis you just can’t get anywhere else. When we started, in the 1960s, that meant distributing a mimeographed newsletter, by mail and by hand, to a small network of activists. As we grew over the years, that newsletter became our flagship Report on the Americas, which earned the distinction of being the most widely-read English-language magazine on Latin America, and our reports played a crucial role in the solidarity movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Our work on Chile and Central America circulated across borders in the hands of our dedicated readers, passed from student activists to heads of state.

We’re incredibly proud of this 47-year history, but we also recognize that information no longer travels the way it used to—we no longer have to fly from Santiago with a suitcase full of pamphlets to learn what activists thousands of miles away are doing: in real time, we receive their tweets from the streets they have barricaded, their Facebook updates from the polling places, their blog posts with breaking stories. Information for change now lives on the web, and so NACLA must, too. It’s with this in mind that we bring you the news that the next issue of the NACLA Report on the Americas will be the final print issue of the magazine. This is far from the end—it is shift in how we accomplish our mission; as we embark on this journey, we invite you to join us.

As you all know, today we find and share information in ways that we couldn’t even imagine five years ago. Rather than purchasing a whole magazine or album, we increasingly just buy the few articles or songs that interest us most. And when an article moves us, we share it through Facebook and email, rather than lending the whole magazine to friends. To keep up with these changes, even the biggest and most well funded journalism institutions are revamping their strategies to reach readers via social media, and we at NACLA need to take advantage of this moment as well. With changing reader habits and prohibitively expensive printing costs, we’ve decided that the magazine isn’t the best vehicle for continuing our mission.  So, in 2015 we will move away from the magazine model. We will print Volume 47.4, the final issue, which will come out in February. After that, we will unbundle articles and publish them all through our newly redesigned website. We’ll continue to bring you incisive, analytic coverage of Latin America from a progressive perspective, but it will be in a new format. This move to online will allow us to concentrate our resources on reaching the widest possible audience.

Over the last decade, dozens of blogs and websites covering Latin America have come and gone. What sets NACLA apart from the upstarts is our long institutional history, our wide network of activists and scholars, and the support we’ve received over decades from people like you. You have made NACLA what it has been during these past five decades. Now we’re asking you to take this next step with us. Not only do we want you to keep reading and sharing our coverage, but we are also looking for more people to be involved in creating information for change. If you are interested in joining our collective of writers, editors, and volunteers, we hope you’ll reach out.

Historically, magazine subscriptions were one of our most important sources of revenue—but as the web has become the primary way people find information, fewer people are subscribing to magazines in general. We’ve seen this, as well: even while our subscription numbers are declining, our web traffic is constantly increasing. As we transition away from the print magazine, your support of our work is more important than ever. Please connect with us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and make a gift today, not only in recognition of our incredible history, but to help us bring about the future we want to see: one where NACLA’s web presence can have a tangible impact on the public discourse around Latin America and U.S. policy in the region.

Though you will no longer receive the NACLA Report in your mailbox after publication of the winter issue, you will find the same great content online at nacla.org. Plus, Jacobin, a quarterly magazine of socialist thought, has agreed to fulfill your NACLA subscription. If you are owed additional issues of the NACLA Report as part of your active subscription, you will receive Jacobin instead. If you do not wish to receive Jacobin magazine, and would prefer to make the remainder of your subscription a donation, please contact us for a tax-deductible donation receipt. 

We are so grateful to you, our loyal readers, for subscribing, sharing, and supporting the NACLA Report over the years. As we embark on this New Year and a new online future for NACLA, we hope that you will join us.

 

In solidarity,

Anila Churi

Director-Publisher

 

The NACLA Board of Directors

 

P.S. We plan to host an event in New York this spring to celebrate the last issue of the NACLA Report. We hope to see you there! Stay tuned for more details on nacla.org.

 

Don't want to miss the final issue? Pre-order the final print issue of the NACLA Report now. 

Have questions? See our Q+A on the final print issue and NACLA's future here