MONTEVIDEO (Uruguay) - Convinced that the breakdown of the traditional family is the prime cause for the moral degradation of our modern-day society, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Theological Seminary (UTS), has embarked on a media crusade involving the worldwide establishment of pro-family newspapers.

Eventually, Rev. Moon plans to open daily newspapers in 185 countries around the world through a print media network that will take advantage of recent technological advances, such as satellite communications that permit the rapid transmission and exchange of data.

Because Rev. Moon's main concern is to promote "true family values," he has called on a number of representatives of the Family Federation for World Peace (also founded by him), as well as a number of UTS graduates, to become actively involved in this ambitious media project.

Especially, several graduates from the 1995 and 1996 Class were invited to participate in the launching of Tiempos del Mundo, a newspaper targeted to the Hispanic communities in the American hemisphere. Tiempos del Mundo is slated to become the first Pan-American newspaper, through its publication in at least 17 different countries (10 in South America, 5 in Central America, one in the Caribbean, plus the United States).

Tiempos del Mundo reporters in each country send their articles through the V-SAT satellite system to the Buenos Aires editorial headquarters, where the stories are gathered, edited and then, in turn, "broadcast" simultaneously to each country.

The international news that is thus shared by the various countries, however, is not the only coverage that will be provided by the Tiempos del Mundo affiliates. Each affiliate is also responsible for the gathering and publishing of local (national) news, which will provide the editions of Tiempos del Mundo in each country their own distinct national news and advertising pages. This combination of an international edition and a local one is unique in the print media industry, where newspapers with international editions (such as the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times) are targeted to certain regions (such as Asia and Europe), but not to specific countries. Other publications with international distribution, such as Newsweek, Time, Reader's Digest, etc., publish editions in various languages, but all editions basically have the same content.

The uniqueness of Tiempos del Mundo, hence, is its potential to compete in the local publishing markets, while at the same time emerging as a major regional and international newspaper.

Interest in international news has increased dramatically over the years, as television (for example the CNN worldwide news network) and the World-Wide-Web information explosion have made the "global village" concept a reality more than ever before.

Although Tiempos del Mundo has been published as a weekly since its inauguration on November 23, the newspaper is preparing to go daily some time this summer.

Coming back to the issue of family values, Tiempos del Mundo is dedicating a lot of its attention to issues affecting the well-being of the family. Such issues deal with political, economic, sociological, cultural and other topics, as the problems that our communities and families are faced with are the result of a complexity of factors.

In this regard, Tiempos del Mundo recently published an extensive series of articles analyzing the plight of millions of children in Latin America whose abandonment and marginal existence have come to symbolize the economic malaise and gross inequalities typical of many Latin American aspiring democracies.

Also, Tiempos del Mundo has started a special supplement, entitled "The Family," which is dedicated to helping parents in their challenging task of creating healthy and better families.

Apart from its role in defending family values, Tiempos del Mundo also seeks to help in promoting greater cooperation and unity between the two Americas. This aspiration of inter-American cooperation is nothing new, of course, as evidenced by the existence of such international institutions as the Organization of American States (OAS), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the National Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, not to mention the efforts to expand inter-American trade through NAFTA and Mercosur.

North and South America seem indeed to have a common destiny, as symbolized perhaps by the mountainous chain, which, like a spinal column, interconnects North and South America from the Rocky Mountains in Canada and the United States to the Andes Mountains extending all the way to Argentina and Chile.

For the record, below is a list of the Latin American nations where Tiempos del Mundo will be published (with the names of UTS graduates working as bureau managers in the respective countries between parentheses): Mexico Honduras (Josef Schinwald, Class of '95) Nicaragua (Bret Moss, Class of '96) Panama (Paul Greene, Class of '95) Costa Rica (Ed Heinz, Class of '95) Dominican Republic (Jim Humphreys, Class of '96) Venezuela (Katsumi Kambashi, Class of '95) Colombia Ecuador Bolivia Peru Sao Paolo Paraguay Uruguay (Dirk Anthonis, Class of '95) Argentina Chile (Takuya Ishii, Class of '95)

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