August 25 was Atención’s anniversary, celebrating 45 years of service to the people of San Miguel de Allende. Like the rest of the world, our minds were focused on the present, so we forgot to celebrate.

 

As you may know, beginning in March, we stopped printing Atención. We held out as long as we could, but in the end, it was difficult to maintain production. As businesses began to close, distribution became complicated, and the risk of getting COVID through contact with the publication process was too high, so we decided to stop printing temporarily. This came as a surprise to our advertisers and readers, but they have steadily shown their support, understanding that the COVID-19 pandemic and the enforced quarantine forced this decision. 

 

This is the first time that the physical newspaper stopped being for sale, but the press did not stop—nor should it ever—and so we have been publishing digitally every Friday. This requires a great effort on the part of the Atención team, including the volunteer corps of copy editors and proofreaders, in addition to support from the Biblioteca Director General and the Library Board, our publishing house.

 

In true Mexican spirit, we saw an opportunity as we faced the threat posed to the newspaper by the pandemic, and we took it on. We developed, revised, and launched our new website and our other digital platforms: the Qué Pasa calendar, our Facebook page, and our Instagram account. We strengthened our editorial and production teams by hiring a web editor, a reporter for the digital area, and two advertising vendors, and we will soon have a commercial manager and a translator, which will allow us to advance our projects based on the vision of the media that we want to become.

 

Accepting that life continues with or without the pandemic, we have decided to return to the printed version stronger than ever and with an important change. After many years of publishing every Friday, Atención will now be available for purchase on Thursday at the same distribution points as before. This way, our readers will have an additional day to find out what is happening in our municipality and will be able to plan their weekends with more advance notice. 

 

We appreciate your support in these difficult times, and we invite you to continue reading the paper on our website: www.atencionsanmiguel.org; our calendar of events: www.quepasasanmiguel.org; and on our Facebook and Instagram pages.

 

We wish to thank our advertisers for remaining loyal through this process and not giving up on us. We invite your continued support so that we can continue to help the San Miguel de Allende Public Library with its uninterrupted work of more than 65 years of helping the youth and children of San Miguel. Your input and contributions to our newspaper become scholarships, education resources, equipment, and books—which together form a basis to sustain this great community center, La Biblioteca.

 

Now, let’s celebrate! Here’s to many more years. 

May the press never stop; may the press never die.

 

Tania Noriz Martinez

Editor-in-Chief