Editorial Perfil launches daily newspaper to combat algorithmic news fragmentation

Editorial Perfil launched a new daily newspaper in Argentina to promote media literacy and shared reading habits among families.

The publisher is reviving a print tradition to counter the way algorithms personalize news for individual users. The company argues that shared reading creates a sense of community because it forces different people to encounter the same information at the same time.

This approach draws on the theories of Benedict Anderson, a political scientist who argued that nations are imagined communities built through the collective experience of reading newspapers. The new publication will be donated to schools and families with children of school age. This initiative aims to address concerns from teachers about declining reading habits and shorter attention spans caused by constant digital notifications.

The move follows a trend in countries like Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, where schools have returned to using paper books after experimenting with digital tools. Editorial Perfil previously experimented with a daily format in 1998, which lasted for 84 editions. The company resumed a Sunday edition in 2005 and added a Saturday edition in 2007.

The new daily edition, which runs from Monday to Friday, seeks to create a shared space where readers can discuss the same news and foster a sense of common identity.