▷ #OPINION Four writer-journalists who won the Nobel Prize #21Oct – El Impulso

The presence of the figure of the writer in journalism dates back to its origins in the late Middle Ages, accentuated after the irruption of the printing press. The journalistic functions in the printed media are carried out first by the writers, among them the poets. But with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, its substitution is recorded with the conversion of news into capitalist merchandise. Then will come the license regime for its exercise established by the fascist Benito Mussolini until the current status of the professional journalist.

Journalism is based on reality unlike literature that uses fiction. Literature is not governed by a law to move in the fields of professional liberalism, being widely accepted in academic spheres as a true genre. The opposite occurs with journalism, as it is considered a subgenre. The exception is made by the new journalism that appeals to the literary narrative in vogue in the 1960s in the United States.

– Advertising –

Larense writer and journalist Juan José “Popeye” Peralta tells us that for the practice of journalism, the writer has the advantage that he knows how to write in a vocational and natural way, not learned in the academy or university.

Writers fit into that mold: Albert Camus, Gabriel García Márquez, Ernest Hemingway and Mario Vargas Llosa. None of them learned journalism systematically at university but on their own.

Albert Camus is the inventor of one of the best definitions of the journalist when he calls it: “The journalist is the historian of the moment”. A conception nuanced by the force of the temporal with the urgency of the journalistic message.

– Advertising –

To his trade as a philosopher he joins that of a journalist and writer committed to the cause of human freedom in his fight against German fascism during World War II. He then closes ranks in the newspaper El Combate as editor.

His style conforms to that proposed by the American Joseph Pulitzer for brevity, simplicity and fairness. All his life he worked as a journalist. He calls attention to the style of Camus in writing even literature with the necessary brevity and simplicity. We appreciate it in his novel El Extranjero, written in a radio style, as it happens at the beginning of the story: “Mom has died today”. A short prose and indicative past tense which catches the reader in every word, phrase, sentence and paragraph.

The Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa began as a journalist at the age of 16 in the newspaper La Crónica where he worked as an editor, reporter, chronicler and interviewer. Then would come his foray into radio as editor of the Radio Panamericana news program, the raw material for his book La Tía Julia and the writer in which he relates that experience. In the first half of the 1960s, he worked at Radio France International in the production, direction and leadership of the space Literature to debate. He is proud to have gone through all the sources of the medium, even the slight social notes.

Reality, society, freedom and democracy come together in his conception of journalism. In this way, the trade perceives it as “that bridge with reality”. «Journalism, both news and opinion, is the greatest guarantor of freedom, the best tool that a society has to find out what is wrong, to promote the cause of justice and to improve democracy. ».

The American Ernest Hemingway also dedicated himself to journalism from a very young age for four years in the newspaper The “Toronto Star” when he abandoned his medical studies. The award-winning writer theorizes about the profession by way of useful advice for the best performance of it. Among these the use of action verbs and forceful. These journalistic experiences are collected in the book “Published in Toronto 1920-1924”. Also his writings as a war correspondent are found in the work Special Envoy. He elaborates a kind of decalogue in which he states that it should be written simply, which in his opinion is not easy at all. In his novel The Old Man and the Sea, we believe, the journalist who was so short and direct in his prose expands.

Gabriel García Márquez ventured into journalism in 1948 in the newspaper El Universal after leaving his law studies. His greatest feat consists in renewing Colombian journalism in the 1950s when he seemed stagnant contributing his writings impregnated with literary flight without losing the essence of the genre. He then writes some referential chronicles, which shook the environment, among them those gathered in the book Relato de un náufrago. In that book he highlights the versatile reporter with the necessary capacity to know how to ask, investigate and get to the root of the facts. He is one of those who makes conceptual approaches to the trade. In this regard he maintains: “Journalism is creativity and practice.”

Although he is self-taught in this discipline, he clings to theory with the creation of the Ibero-American Foundation for New Journalism, conceived for the academic training of new generations of journalists. However, in 1998, the National Association of Journalists of Colombia prohibited him from identifying himself as a journalist because he did not have the card that accredited him as a union member. A true paradox due to the indisputable credentials that distinguish him as a master of the genre.

To the mastery and practice of the journalistic technique, the four add their art and humanism plus their conceptual reflections on the importance and function of this social science. They are also the lucky winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature and defenders of open societies.

Freddy Torrealba Z.

Twitter: @freddytorreal11

– Advertising –