About Confirmado

Confirmado

Confirmado was an independent newsmagazine first published in Buenos Aires on 7 May 1965, created and directed by Jacobo Timerman after his departure from Primera Plana. It was a weekly modelled on Primera Plana — and through it, on the American news magazines — with a narrative and informative format, long notes of political and economic analysis and reviews of books, films and theatre. Between January and March 1973 it merged with the magazine Análisis to form Análisis-Confirmado, which ceased publication that year, and in late 1975 Confirmado was relaunched under Horacio Agulla, continuing, with changes of periodicity, until 1978. Its two lives made it a compact history of Argentine political journalism between the fall of Illia and the consolidation of the last dictatorship: founded by the man who had modernised the Argentine weekly, and revived, a decade later, as a very different kind of project.

Jacobo Timerman After Primera Plana

Confirmado began in a resignation. Timerman had founded Primera Plana in 1962, the weekly that renewed Argentine journalism in the image of Time and Newsweek, and he left its direction in July 1964, amid rumours of official threats over its opposition line; the magazine announced his departure a week after reporting government threats to sanction uncooperative publications. A year later, in 1965, he created Confirmado, a second weekly built on the same conviction: that Argentina needed a magazine that presented the raw dynamics of the contemporary world without concealment. Timerman brought to the new title one of the most experienced careers in Argentine journalism — he had written political columns for La Razón and Clarín, worked for Agence France-Presse, and interviewed statesmen internationally — and Confirmado was understood from its first issue as the continuation of the Primera Plana experiment under its founder's direct control, after the original had passed to other hands.

The First Issue and Its Editorial Promise

The first edition of Confirmado appeared on Friday 7 May 1965, and in its opening pages Timerman set down the principles of the magazine in an editorial that later accounts quoted at length. The reader, he wrote, would be able to verify to what point world and national events could put to the test the theory and practice of a publication; the theory of Confirmado was to present, without evasion or subterfuge, all the current dynamics of the contemporary world, giving readers all the information, without pretending to influence them except through the raw — and therefore passionate — presentation of the facts. He added a cultural pledge: that nothing Argentine, in artistic activities, in whatever latitude it occurred, would be foreign to the magazine, because it formed part of the national patrimony. From that style and that spirit, the editorial concluded, Confirmado would never depart. The promise defined the magazine's contract with a reader described in later studies as avid for information and analysis on national, and secondarily international, affairs, with a sophisticated cultural consumption.

Format: News, Analysis and the Cultural Guide

In its structure, Confirmado followed the mature news magazine form. Its opening pages published a guide to activities covering music, cinema, books and places of leisure. It included a section called Punto y Coma, which quoted phrases from personalities of culture or politics that had been relevant during the week. Then came the editorial, of great protagonism in every edition, and from there the magazine proper opened with notes of general interest. As a product, it was characterised by its extensive notes of political and economic analysis and by its reviews of cultural productions such as books, films, dance and theatre performances. Its advertising appealed to readers of high purchasing power, preferably men — perhaps businessmen with decision-making capacity — with advertisements for cars, imported products, airlines, men's boutiques, real-estate and financial services and office supplies predominating. That advertising profile confirmed the magazine's intended place: the weekly of the Argentine decision-making class in the 1960s.

Editorial Line and the Politics of the 1960s

Confirmado carried a strong anti-Peronist discourse, in line with the critical position that Timerman's magazines adopted toward the government of Arturo Illia and toward the Peronist alternative alike. It published through the fall of Illia and the installation of the Onganía dictatorship in June 1966, a regime that suspended Primera Plana in 1969 and subjected critical journalism to escalating pressure. Confirmado's own first life continued into the early 1970s under that changed climate. The magazine's significance in those years was partly that it existed as an independent title at all: it was not the organ of a large publishing house like Abril or Atlántida, but the personal enterprise of its director, dependent on his reputation, his newsroom and his advertisers. When Timerman moved on to found the newspaper La Opinión in 1971, modelled on Le Monde and considered by many the greatest achievement of his career, the centre of his work shifted from the weekly magazine to the daily paper, and Confirmado moved toward the merger that ended its first epoch.

Merger with Análisis and the End of the First Epoch

Between January and March 1973, Confirmado merged with its colleague Análisis, a magazine founded in 1962, and the result was Análisis-Confirmado. The merged magazine ceased publication in May 1973, with its number 12. The timing placed the end of Confirmado's first life at one of the most convulsive moments in Argentine history: the return of Peronism, the elections of March 1973, the release of political prisoners, the Ezeiza massacre and the rapid approach of Perón's final presidency. A weekly built for the analytical tempo of the 1960s closed as the country's politics accelerated beyond any weekly's capacity to contain it. The merger itself was a sign of the economics of independent magazine publishing, in which two respected titles could not sustain themselves separately. With the disappearance of Análisis-Confirmado, the Timerman weekly tradition passed fully to La Opinión, until that newspaper too was expropriated by the dictatorship in 1977 and its director kidnapped.

Relaunch Under Horacio Agulla, 1975 to 1978

Confirmado was relaunched in late 1975, this time under the direction of Horacio Agulla, then a provincial senator. After a first attempt as a weekly, the publication continued with monthly periodicity and only in April 1978 did it appear once a week again. Scholars who studied the relaunched magazine, analysing forty editions published between January 1976 and September 1978 held at the National Library and the Library of Congress, described a publication that retained the external forms of its predecessor — long notes of political and economic analysis, cultural reviews — while assuming a very different political imprint on the eve and in the first years of the Proceso dictatorship. Official advertising grew during that period, among the advertisements for cars, imported products and airlines that had always characterised the title. The relaunched Confirmado thus became a case study in how a prestigious masthead could be carried into a new political project: same name, same analytical format, different director, different Argentina.

Closure in 1978

Confirmado ceased publication in 1978, closing its second and final life. The directory's seed record summarises the trajectory exactly: created in 1965, merged in 1973, relaunched in late 1975, and closed in the 1970s. No verified circulation figure for either epoch of Confirmado is given in the sources consulted for this profile, and this profile does not invent one; the runs preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional and the Biblioteca del Congreso de la Nación, with a small number of editions recorded as missing, constitute the material archive of the title. Its closure in 1978 removed from the kiosks one of the last survivors of the generation of political weeklies born in the 1960s, at a moment when the dictatorship had closed, expropriated or intimidated most of the independent press its founder's generation had built. Timerman himself was by then a former prisoner of the regime, on the way to the exile from which he would write Preso sin nombre, celda sin número.

Legacy

The legacy of Confirmado was double, like its history. In its first life it was Jacobo Timerman's second magazine and the proof that the modern Argentine weekly could be recreated by its founder outside the title that had made him famous; its first editorial remained one of the clearest statements of the news magazine's promise to its readers ever printed in Argentina. In its second life it became evidence, studied by historians of the press, of the political uses of prestigious formats under authoritarian conditions. For the WorldNM directory, Confirmado stands as the independent Buenos Aires newsmagazine of 1965: modelled on Primera Plana, directed first by Timerman and later by Agulla, merged and relaunched and finally closed in 1978. Its name promised that the news it carried was confirmed, and for thirteen interrupted years, in two very different Argentinas, readers bought it on that promise.