About Pregón

Pregón

Pregón is a Spanish-language daily newspaper published in San Salvador de Jujuy, the capital of Jujuy province in Argentina's far northwest. Founded on 24 January 1956, it is the oldest newspaper still published in the province, and together with El Tribuno de Jujuy it is classified by academic researchers as one of the province's two dominant reference newspapers — the papers that other media and public actors treat as unavoidable points of reference. Pregón began in the politically charged months after the 1955 coup, survived an early insolvency, and from June 1959 was owned and directed for nearly six decades by the businessman and politician Annuar Jorge, whose family has owned it ever since. Its fiftieth anniversary in 2006 was formally recognised by the Argentine Senate.

Founding in 1956

Pregón was founded on 24 January 1956 on the initiative of the journalists and political leaders Ramón Luna Espeche and Rodolfo Ceballos. The Senate's fiftieth-anniversary declaration recalls that the paper was born in an old house at Belgrano 563, with multiple rooms and wooden floors, and describes the artisanal production of those years: the famous lead letters with which pages were assembled in metal frames on the flat table of the press, inked with a roller, and then printed by pressing the paper with another roller. The young newspaper later worked with a headline-setting machine and the linotype, which paved the way for a rotary press that speeded up printing; in time the paper adopted the offset system, reaching a notably high level of editorial quality. Early editions were printed in black and white; colour was incorporated a few years later, together with a growing number of pages.

Political origins after 1955

Pregón appeared weeks after the self-styled Revolución Libertadora had overthrown Juan Domingo Perón, in a provincial press landscape being rapidly remade. Research on the Libertadora and the press in Jujuy records that, once the newspaper Jujuy was closed, Libertad began publication and, in January 1956, Pregón burst onto the scene; both new projects emerged unambiguously under the precepts of the anti-Peronist press, imbued with a liberal cultural imprint. An early Pregón editorial paid homage to the federal interventor Gastón Clement, praising his restorative accent after what the paper called twelve dark years. The same research notes that Pregón and Libertad differed from the preceding gazettes in preferring to publicise the activities of the political parties rather than simply attacking the deposed movement, and that their appearance introduced the party-political agenda into a provincial public sphere from which party leaders had previously had little press space.

Insolvency and the arrival of Annuar Jorge

The newspaper's first three years were financially unstable, and the company was declared insolvent. On 10 June 1959 a local investment group made up of Annuar Jorge, Kamal Musri and Julio Illesca intervened in the creditors' proceedings, covered the debt and became the new owning corporation. Annuar Jorge took over the direction of the paper on that date, beginning what the Senate declaration calls a new and vigorous stage marked by editorial renewal. Of the founders, Luna Espeche left the company definitively and went on to editorial ventures of his own, such as the newspaper El Federal in 1963, while Rodolfo Ceballos — a teacher and school director with a distinguished public reputation — was retained by the new owners as head of the newsroom and remained associated with the paper for decades as an adviser and promoter of Jujuy's history.

Annuar Jorge: owner, director and politician

Annuar Jorge was born in Perico, Jujuy, in 1931, into a family of Syrian immigrants dedicated to the meat trade. He had been mayor of his native town during the 1955 military intervention and was elected to the provincial legislature in 1959, the same year he acquired Pregón. As a newspaper proprietor he became vice-president of ADEPA, the Argentine press association, and attended congresses of the Inter American Press Association, bodies he joined in 1963; he also built a hotel, housing and a shopping centre in San Salvador de Jujuy that bears his name. His political career ran alongside the newspaper: he later founded his own provincial movements, stood three times as a candidate for governor of Jujuy, and sat in the National Senate in 1988 and 1989 completing another senator's term. He directed Pregón from 1959 until his death in July 2018, at the age of eighty-seven — a tenure of almost sixty years that made the paper inseparable from his public figure. The newspaper has remained in his family's ownership since 1959.

A dominant reference newspaper

Academic studies of the Jujuy media system describe Pregón and El Tribuno de Jujuy — the latter founded in 1980 — as the province's two dominant reference newspapers, privileged platforms for the expression of political leaders, whose publication gives content a permanence that broadcast media lack. Both papers have maintained a daily frequency since their beginnings, unlike other provincial graphic publications that disappeared or appeared intermittently. Researchers also note that Pregón achieved its permanence through notable political participation and a close relationship with the state, becoming, through a system of party alliances and official advertising, the principal spokesman of the provincial government of the day. That critical assessment, published by scholars at the National University of Jujuy, forms part of the documented record of the paper's role and is reported here as the researchers' analysis.

Recognition and anniversaries

In 2005 the Argentine Senate considered a declaration of adherence to the fiftieth anniversary of the Jujuy newspaper Pregón, expressing institutional recognition of its broad and outstanding editorial trajectory; the anniversary fell on 24 January 2006, fifty years after the founding. The Senate text preserves valuable details of the paper's material history — the Belgrano street house, the lead type and linotype, the arrival of the rotary press and offset, the incorporation of colour — as well as the date, 10 June 1959, on which Annuar Jorge assumed the direction. Such parliamentary records are among the most reliable public sources for the history of Argentina's provincial press, and Pregón's file in the National Congress reflects its standing in the province.

Coverage and character

Pregón is a general-information provincial daily, produced in San Salvador de Jujuy and read across Jujuy province. Comparative research on the informational quality of regional newspapers has studied Pregón alongside El Tribuno de Jujuy as the province's reference press, examining their news values and agendas; studies of official discourse in the province likewise treat the two papers as the unavoidable print voices of Jujuy's public life, including in their coverage of major civic commemorations such as the bicentenary of the Jujuy Exodus. The paper's documented identity is thus that of a politically engaged provincial daily whose history is intertwined with the province's party politics from the anti-Peronist realignment of 1956 onward.

Pregón today

Pregón continues to publish in San Salvador de Jujuy, retaining its standing as the oldest active newspaper in Jujuy province, a status repeatedly affirmed in academic and institutional sources. It marked seventy years of publication in January 2026. Detailed current information about its circulation, print runs and digital audience is not published in the sources consulted for this profile, and no such figures are asserted here. What the record does establish is the paper's continuity: founded in 1956 by Luna Espeche and Ceballos, rescued from insolvency in 1959, directed by Annuar Jorge for nearly six decades, and still owned by his family.

Legacy

Pregón's legacy is that of the archetypal Argentine provincial political daily: born of a partisan moment, professionalised through successive printing technologies, and sustained for seven decades by an owner-director who was simultaneously a leading provincial political figure. Its pages document Jujuy's passage from the post-1955 order through dictatorship and democracy, and its survival — when so many interior papers of its generation vanished — has made it a primary source for historians of the province as well as a continuing actor in its public life.