Haiti's Le Nouvelliste Goes Online-Only Following Gang Looting of Its Printing Press

Com reported. They began looting and vandalizing the building that day, eventually dismantling and carrying off the newspaper's 130-foot printing press. An aerial photo shows the destroyed offices in the area.

The incident forced Le Nouvelliste, Haiti's oldest newspaper at 128 years, to move exclusively online two years ago. Editor-in-Chief Frantz Duval has kept publishing the paper digitally since then. It took eight months for Duval to send someone to the ransacked streets near the office to assess what remained, he said.

The last print edition of Le Nouvelliste was dated March 26, 2024, hidden amid documents on Duval's desk in the current office. That office is now located in the hills of Pétion-Ville, far from the abandoned downtown newsroom. The temporary building sits in one of the final sections of the capital still free from gang control.

Le Nouvelliste is one of the oldest continuously published French-language newspapers in the Caribbean and one of just a handful of institutions in Haiti to surpass a century of existence. It has been led by predecessors since 1898, when it was first known as Le Matin for the first year. Duval sits beneath portraits of his nine editorial predecessors in his office.

The newspaper ceased publication for 11 days in 1921 during the United States' occupation of Haiti, in response to martial law prohibiting articles detrimental to American rule. It also underwent an ownership change at the turn of the 20th century, causing a three-month pause in publication.

Since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, Port-au-Prince has faced increased gang activity and instability.

More than 1.4 million Haitians are estimated to be displaced, an increase of roughly 50% compared with a year earlier. Le Nouvelliste has a full staff of 60, many of whom work from home. Duval has served as Le Nouvelliste's editor-in-chief since 2010.

His first article appeared in the paper in 1985 during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier. He joined as a reporter two years later. “We spoke in signs back then,” Duval said of the dictatorship years.

“We wrote between the lines. ” Le Nouvelliste launched Livres en Folie, the country's largest literary festival, in 1995. It launched its online edition in 2004. One in six of its reporters are women.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reported nine journalist killings in Haiti in 2022, amid wider security challenges. Two reporters were abducted in downtown Port-au-Prince in March. Haiti was ranked in the high restriction category for press freedom by the Inter American Press Association's index last year.

Radio Caraïbes, founded in 1949, had its offices looted and burned by organized criminals. Max Chauvet is the fourth-generation owner of Le Nouvelliste. The newspaper has 120,000 registered users, Chauvet said.

“The majority get by as best they can: with a pen, a microphone,” Duval said of Haitian journalists. “My father used to repeat: ‘It is not the Chauvet family’s newspaper. It belongs to the country,’” Chauvet said.