By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 12, 2008; A12

BOGOTA, Colombia, May 11 -- El Espectador, Colombia's oldest newspaper, has been bombed, torched and occupied by troops, and its most legendary editor, Guillermo Cano, was slain in a hail of gunfire. The paper published Gabriel García Márquez's first stories, long before he became a Nobel Prize winner, and has printed verses from the renowned poet Porfirio Barba-Jacob.

In short, it has had a storied history. But it appeared on the brink of coming to a close when, beset by financial troubles, the paper laid off much of its staff and became a weekly in 2001.

Now, in a counterintuitive tale at a time when papers around the world are in trouble, El Espectador has returned to the daily-newspaper business. It is a nod to Colombia's booming economy, among Latin America's most vibrant, but also to what many see as the big journalistic void in one of the world's most fabulously newsy countries -- the lack of a hard-hitting daily ready to take on the powers that be.

Seeing itself as something of a noble institution on a mission, El Espectador has hired reporters and editors and redesigned the paper from a broadsheet into a European-style tabloid. On Sunday, it hit the streets remade, its press run of 150,000 celebrated -- for this is a country where groundbreaking journalists abound but where their work has often resulted in assassinations or been stifled by self-censorship.

"It's been a history of great battles," said Fidel Cano, the editor, a man with big, bushy eyebrows and rumpled clothes. "This paper has been on the verge of closing several times. And it has always found a way to get ahead and stay open. History repeats itself."

Among journalists, here and beyond, the paper's decision to go daily has generated something of a collective, "Say what?"

Newspapers in general are in deep trouble: plummeting circulation, slashed budgets, smaller staffs, less-substantial news. Many have closed, and others are struggling as the Internet, falling ad revenue and changing reader habits threaten paper and ink.

Reminded of this, Gonzalo Córdoba, the tall and stylish publisher, smiled and nodded.

"That's what people say: 'Papers are closing and look what these crazy guys are doing?' " Córdoba said. "It's a reality, and you can't block the sun with your hands."

Two years ago, he said, El Espectador hired a consultant to study its options. The verdict: El Espectador had a brand name, but remaining a weekly was not sustainable.

Published just on Sunday, the paper emphasized an eclectic opinion page and a handful of in-depth reports on the country's shadowy conflicts and the constant foibles of the political class.

The paper began a long climb back. In 2003, it lost nearly $8 million. By last year, losses slipped below $400,000. The Santo Domingo family, one of Colombia's wealthiest and the owners of the paper, gave the green light to go daily. The paper expects to break even in two years.

"With Colombia growing so fast, with this economic boom, it's inconceivable that there's only one national paper," Córdoba said, referring to the largest-circulation paper in the country, El Tiempo. "It's foolish not to take advantage of these times and the space that we have right now."

Colombia can be a fascinating place to cover. It's a dynamic, beautiful country rich in culture and characters, from well-bred sophisticates to working stiffs with a gift for telling tales. On the other hand, it's beset by conflict, drugs and some of the world's most fanatical warlords.

Daily news events border on the outrageous -- the latest big story to shake the country is about a former congresswoman who readily admitted casting a crucial vote in support of President Álvaro Uribe in exchange for political favors.

Bogota is at the center of this vibrant news environment.

This chilly capital high in the Andes has several dailies, from the business-oriented La República to El Nuevo Siglo, which focuses on politics. It also has scrappy progressive papers such as Un Pasquín, which comes out occasionally to excoriate the elite. Semana is regarded as perhaps the best newsweekly in Latin America.

But El Espectador's editors are betting that their paper will find a dedicated readership -- one editor called the typical reader "a restless intellectual" -- by carving a niche. Its editors say it will be aggressive when needed, and incisive. With a limited staff, it will pick its shots carefully. And it will work to publish well-written stories, a trait generally missing from Colombia's big dailies.

Its directors are also preparing for the multi-headed journalism of the future: El Espectador's Web site has 11 of its own reporters, and it shares reporting with the Caracol television network.

"Our idea is to get people to think," said Jorge Cardona, the managing editor. "We want to be well-written and offer lot of context, to do a very good job explaining what is happening."

The paper's first revived daily edition underscored its serious nature, with an examination of Uribe's ideology, a story about an army colonel accused of rights abuses and a front-pager on the country's centrist politicians.

There is a profile on a leading human rights activist, Iván Cepeda, who is under attack from the government. There's also a reconstruction of how Clara Rojas, kidnapped by guerrillas, gave birth in the jungle. It is a story told by Héctor Abad, a novelist El Espectador hopes will be one of the paper's signature writers.

As last week came to a close, the newsroom bubbled with enthusiasm ahead of Sunday's launch. Most of the reporters are in their 20s. Their editors, only slightly older, are prone to say things like, "For me, this is more than a job, it's an honor."

Élber Gutiérrez, who recently arrived from Semana magazine, acknowledged feeling anxious. And Nelson Padilla, the Sunday editor, listed the challenges the paper faces.

Having worked at El Espectador in the 1990s, then elsewhere, Padilla said he could not imagine himself anywhere else now. "You have journalism in your blood and El Espectador is journalism in Colombia," he said.

The paper's history is so rich that the French daily Le Monde in 1994 declared it one of the world's eight best dailies.

Fidel Cano, great grandfather of the current editor, founded the paper on March 22, 1887, in what was then a sleepy Medellin.

Soon after, the government shut it down. Cano, a historian and poet who translated the works of Victor Hugo into Spanish, was jailed for a year. The paper started its presses again and was shut down again. So it has been for 121 years, with El Espectador becoming a symbol of press freedom along the way.

The paper's most trying times were during the drug wars of the 1980s, when its reports on the cocaine trade led Pablo Escobar, chief of the Medellin cartel, to order Guillermo Cano's assassination in 1986.

Three years later, having been unable to stop the presses, the cartel bombed the paper's Bogota headquarters, leaving it a shambles. El Espectador published the next day.

Returning to daily publication, then, is only the latest challenge.

"If this does not work," said Fidel Cano, Guillermo's nephew, "we cannot go back to being a weekly again."