Semana

Semana (Spanish: Week) is a weekly magazine of opinion and analysis in Colombia.

History

Semana was founded in 1946 by Alberto Lleras Camargo (who would become president of Colombia in 1958) and that folded in 1961. It was relaunched by journalist Felipe López Caballero in 1983.

Born in 1947, he attended the Liceo Frances in Bogota, lived in Boston, graduated from Nueva Granada Military College in Bogota, lived in Germany, attended the London School of Economics, earned an MBA in Switzerland, and worked in London for the Federation of Coffee Growers. He was 35 years old when he decided to start a magazine in 1982, and he took two earlier Colombian magazines as models. One was Alberto Lleras Camargo's Semana; the other was Alternativa, a left-wing weekly published by Enrique Santos and Gabriel García Márquez. The foreign magazines that he strove to imitate were Time and Newsweek.

Recalling the prestige that had been enjoyed by Lleras's magazine, López asked for, and was given, permission to use the same name. López set up shop in a shabby set of offices, purchased used desks and typewriters from Alternativa, and set about developing “the first publication of independent journalism in the country's history.” His first issue came out on 12 May 12 1982. Its cover story was about terrorism. Since then it has continued, according to the above-cited profile of López, to be “a bastion of critical, rigorous journalism.”