Media Moves

The Huffington Post has partnered with Mexico’s Grupo Imagen Multimedia to launch its 16th international edition.

HuffPost Mexico will debut in September of 2016.

The new Spanish-language site, whose editors and reporters will be based in Mexico City, will replace the U.S. Spanish-language portal Voces, which was shut down earlier this year.

In January, when probed about the reasons for the Voces shutdown, a company spokesperson acknowledged they were “transferring HuffPost Voces to HuffPost Mexico, a new edition we’re preparing to launch that will serve our Spanish-speaking audience in Latin America.”

At the time, the spokesperson would not respond to questions about their Spanish-speaking audience in the U.S.

The Huffington Post launched its first international edition in May 2011, expanding into 15 markets in five years, before eliminating Voces.

Grupo Imagen multimedia, part of Grupo Empresarial Angeles, is a radio, television and print media company, which owns Excélsior newspaper and cable channel Excélsior TV.

This is the last Voces home page before it was “shut down.”

Voces, Huffington Post’s Spanish-language portal aimed at U.S. Hispanics, is no more. Launched on May 1, 2012 as a HuffPo rebranded site, previously known as AOL Latino, Voces no longer has a landing page.

Going to the voces.huffingtonpost.com URL redirects the user to the HuffPo’s Latino Voices English-language site. And if you click on the Voces (en español) link on the Latino Voices site, it takes you nowhere. It’s an inactive link.

As one insider told Media Moves, “the website was turned off.”

The last members of the Voces team in the U.S. were laid off last week in a wave of Huffington Post cuts. Among them: Managing Editor Marinés Arroyo, Senior Editor Hirania Luzardo, and Senior Entertainment Editor Mandy Fridmann.

The three women had worked on the site since it was AOL Latino.

A source says layoffs had been a constant at Voces, almost since its inception. At its peak, there were aproximately 20-25 people working for the online pub. By last week, that number had dwindled to the three U.S. editors and a couple of outsourced contributors/editors based in Mexico.

A request for an explanation as to why Voces was shut down and if any changes were planned for Latino Voices elicited the following one line response from a Huffington Post spokesperson:

“We’ll be transferring HuffPost Voces to HuffPost Mexico, a new edition we’re preparing to launch that will serve our Spanish speaking audience in Latin America.”

Further questions about the issued statement and the fact HuffPo is abandoning Spanish-language content for U.S. audiences went unanswered at the time of this publication.

The statement seems to stray from Arianna Huffington’s Voces 2012 welcome message, which announced “a Spanish-language vertical that will bring the power of HuffPost’s blogging platform to the legacy of AOL Latino,” reflecting “the real experience of Latinos in America,” and revolving around “community and social engagement.”

Update 1/22: After persisting on an answer about the future of HuffPo’s Latino Voices and a request on why Voces was shut down, a company spokesperson sent the following reply:

“There are no changes planned for Latino Voices and we intend to continue reaching our US Latino audience through the section. In addition, we will be launching HuffPost Mexico this year, a new edition that will serve our Spanish speaking audience in Latin America.”

Asked if HuffPost Mexico would take over the Voces URL, the spokesperson said no. Mexico’s site, scheduled to launch in the first half of the year will have a new URL.

The spokesperson would not answer why the company opted for eliminating Spanish-language content for U.S. Hispanic audiences, but said: “We know that Latinos in the U.S. read our entire site, not solely the Latino Voices section. That being said, Latino Voices will continue to be a vibrant part of The Huffington Post.”

Gabriel Lerner has been promoted to Editorial Director, HuffPost Voces.  He was most recently Senior Editor News, Huffington Post Voces (formerly AOL Latino) and Huffington Post Latino Voices.

Gabriel is a journalist, blogger, columnist, author and editor who worked for 14 years at La Opinión. He joined the Huffington Post Media Group in July of 2011.

As of today, AOL Latino no longer exists. Yesterday was the final day of the Spanish-language spin off launched by AOL Corp. in 2003. The site has been rebranded as Huffpost Voces. 

People that log in to www.AOLLatino.com will now automatically be redirected to Huffpostvoces.com.

The front page of today’s HuffPost Voces includes a welcome message in Spanish by Ariana Huffington.

Miguel Ferrer, Editor of the English-language site HuffPost Latino Voices, will also be Managing Editor of Voces.

According to a Portada story, the AOL Latino editorial team is expected to remain in place. Miguel told reporter Laura Martínez that Voces is not a Spanish-language version of the Huffington Post, nor a translation of Latino Voices, but rather “an addition; it is a totally different site that will help nurture content across the HuffPost platforms.”

Read Laura’s musings on the end of AOL Latino in a column she wrote today for Fox News Latino.