How Vilaweb started

Vilaweb was founded in 1995 by journalists Vicent Partal and Assumpció Maresma. At the time, Partal and Maresma were working as editors at La Vanguardia and El Temps, becoming more and more frustrated with journalism as it were, so they decided to found their own newsroom.

Because of Partal's personal background in tech and the early internet, they decided to start with Vilaweb as an online newsroom right from the beginning. The first team consisted of Partal, Maresma and a journalist friend of the two. In the first year, Partal continued to work at La Vanguardia in order to cross-finance Vilaweb.

Partal says that in the beginning they didn't know exactly where the journey with Vilaweb was going, they saw it mainly as an experiment, especially because in 1995 very few people were using the Internet at all. In the early years, Vilaweb mainly earned money by programming websites for others, then also pivoting to create online content for phone companies. It was not until 2001 that Partal and the team realised what a major role the Internet could play in the journalism of the future. Around that time they also started to sell advertising on Vilaweb

Another three years later, in 2004, the team decided to ask readers for money and were among the first to do so, while most legacy media continued to offer everything online for free. It took Vilaweb 11 years to reach its first 2,000 subscribers. After that, growth increased enormously (to 25,000 subscribers today), Partal believes, mainly because the willingness to pay on the Internet gradually increased in general, e.g. for music or video-on-demand.

Looking back, Partal says it’s most important to have not only a journalistic understanding of what you want to do, but also adopt a business mindset.