Two major Puerto Rico newspapers are going digital-only as the industry sheds 270,000 jobs in 20 years

Two of Puerto Rico’s biggest newspapers announced Monday that they will end their print editions in upcoming days and pivot to digital only, joining a worldwide trend.

GFR Media, a Puerto Rican company that publishes El Nuevo Día and Primera Hora, said Monday that the decision responds to a change in consumer habits.

Sept.

24 will mark the last print edition for Primera Hora and Sept.

27 for El Nuevo Día, according to the papers.

“We continue to evolve with the Puerto Rico of the 21st century, one that today numbers more than nine million Puerto Ricans who live on the Island, in the United States, in Europe and in the rest of the world.

We have always been, and will continue to be, wherever Puerto Rico is,” María Luisa Ferré Rangel, publisher of GFR Media, said in a statement.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many people would be laid off.

A spokesperson for GFR Media said the company’s only comment for now was the official statement it issued.

From 2015 to 2025, Grupo Ferré Rangel, the owner of companies including GFR Media, reduced the number of unionized employees from nearly 400 to less than 100, according to the Association of Puerto Rican Journalists.

The two papers join dozens of others in the U.S. mainland that have taken similar steps or shut down completely to save money as ad revenue shrivels and consumer habits change.

Nearly 3,500 newspapers in the U.S. mainland have closed in the past two decades, leading to the elimination of more than 270,000 newspaper jobs, according to Poynter, a nonprofit media institute.

El Nuevo Día began publishing in 1970; its first front page featured stories about Joaquín Balaguer being elected president in the Dominican Republic and whether molasses for Puerto Rican rum was in short supply.

Other notable front pages include the 1984 visit of Pope John Paul II to Puerto Rico — the first pope to visit the U.S. territory — and the 1986 deaths of dozens of people in a hotel fire.