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| Research - How to cite this article – referees' reports – scheduling – metadata – PDF – Creative Commons Gómez Alfaro: Pioneer of Interdisciplinary Studies on the Relationships Between Journalism and Literature in Spain Jorge Miguel Rodríguez Rodríguez, Ph. D. [ C. V. ] Universidad San Jorge, Zaragoza - jmrodriguez@usj.es Abstract: The article rescues and analyzes the work done in 1960 by Antonio Gómez Alfaro, the first Spanish author that carried out a study on relations between journalism and literature using a multidiscipline perspective. The tradition documents the emergence of comparative approaches at the end of the 1990s, but the revision of Gómez Alfaro’s proposal is an exceptional advance, because this intellectual dealt with the merging of literature and journalism with the assistance of scientific fields that range from literary theory to linguistics and anthropology. This multi-focal approach is extraordinary considering at the time Journalism was not part of the Spanish university system; therefore, there was not a scientific platform nor were there academic precedents that supported in-depth, exhaustive research about journalism and literature, a reality that appeared forty years after the publication of the aforementioned precursor. In order to provide an adequate context to the analysis of Gómez Alfaro’s work, the first part undertakes a historic synthesis from when the discussion about journalism as a literary genre arose in 1845 in the Spanish Real Academia, until the birth of the first scientific theories about literary journalism in the 1980s and 90s Keywords: Journalism and Literature; Literary Journalism; Spain; Antonio Gómez Alfaro. Summary: 1. Objectives. 2. Methodology. 3. Studies about relations between journalism and literature in Spain. 4. An exceptional study in Spanish journalism. 4.1. Reality and fiction are not opposites. 4.2. Why litterateurs spurn journalism. 4.3. Is literary journalism a specific genre? 5. Conclusions. 6. Bibliography. 7. Notes. Translated by Connie Nalvarte (Centre 1. Objectives a) The work conducts a historical synthesis of the nuclear and most considered speculations about the journalistic-literary union, from 1845 until 1999, and describes the progression of such contributions, to grant an adequate context to the precursory contributions made by Antonio Gómez Alfaro to interdisciplinary studies about Journalism and Literature in Spain. b) It is research with an and in-depth study of the multi-focal theses made by Gómez Alfaro about Literary journalism, way before the insertion of Journalism as a university career in Spain and the import of analytical models extrapolated from the theoreticians of the American New Journalism. In that way, it is demonstrated that, in contrast of his predecessors, contemporaries and successors up to the late nineties of the 20th century, that author reached an outstanding intellectual maturity, since the approximations to the object of study have been, in general, intuitive and supported only on professional experience, with very little scientific rigor. 2. Methodology The article follows the historical descriptive method and analyses the evolution of reflections about the overlapping between Journalism and Literature since 1845, year when the speculations related to this object of study appeared, until 1999, when Professor Albert Chillón published, which have up until now been considered as the first multi-disciplinary theories on the subject. Therefore, the work is articulated in two parts: In the first part, the research revises the four fundamental documents which approximated themselves to the topic in the 19th century: discourses in the Spanish Real Academia made by Joaquín Francisco Pacheco (1845), Eugenio Sellés (1895), Isidoro Fernández Flórez and Juan Valera (both in 1898). This material is complemented with the analysis of rhetorical and literary precepts from the nineteenths, since in those works the way in which Journalism was considered as a manifestation of Literature is made explicit. The work continuous with the analysis of the first treaties of Spanish Journalism (1891-1912) and of the most considered manuals of Hispanic Journalistic Writing, published from 1930 until 1973, year in which the informative profession was offered as a university career. This first part finished with an overview of the most important theories of hybridization between Journalism and Literature, from 1973 until 1999. The second part recuperates and dissects the main postulates of the work “Communication, journalism and literature”, by Antonio Gómez Alfaro, specifically as to how journalism transforms literary genres, literature acts as a wrapping of journalism, reality is not opposed to fiction; and therefore it is possible for the existence of a Literary Journalism as a specific genre. These are some of the hypotheses that arise forty years after in Spain, which makes Gómez Alfaro a pioneer in the modern studies of Journalism and Literature in this part of the world. Because an aim is to revaluate a study conducted in 1960, we have solely used the bibliography that only and exclusively deal with the relationships between Journalism and Literature, since the topic was first dealt with in 1845. The novelty of the investigation is the recuperation of a forgotten work which reconfigures the history of theories about Literary Journalism in Spain. Studies about the complex marriage between Journalism and Literature in Spain date back to 1845 [1], when lawyer and journalist Joaquín Francisco Pacheco argued in his entrance discourse to the Spanish Real Academia that specific journalistic pieces could reach the aesthetic quality of a literary composition, although they would never be comparable to poetry, ode or tragedy [2]. The dissertation was soon forgotten and was only recalled as an audacity [3] until 1895 when Eugenio Sellés slightly mentioned it to insist in his own words before the Spanish Real Academia (RAE) on the artistic potential of press texts. Three years later, in 1898, Isidoro Fernández Flórez, journalist admitted in such a prestigious academy for his contribution to the Spanish language from Los lunes de El Imparcial, provided plenty of reasons to defend the same cause of his two predecessors. Juan Valera replied to Fernanflor, during the same act of reception of the RAE [4], that newspapers and magazines were an ideal support for the diffusion of all types of writings, including the artistic ones, but he underestimated that journalism could be a literary genre in itself. As it is reasonable, those primary reflections based their postulated in a uniquely experiential vision, and in a germinal historical framework, given that Pacheco, Sellés, Fernández Flórez and Valera practiced Journalism and Literature in a stage in which both institutions were consolidating their own cultural and professional identities. Since the intervention of Fernanflor and Valera in 1898, Journalistic does not know of exclusive and explicit studies about the relationships between Journalism and Literature until the seventies in the 20th century. However, it has been possible to track down some disperse clues about the image of journalism as a new literary modality in rhetorical precepts from the 19th century, works which allow us to know (by omission or abuse) how these publications experimented a complex process of categorizing of journalistic texts, which started with an open disdain and ended with a forced classification that admitted them as bastard and strange manifestations of canonic literature. According to this typifying, journalistic creations had features that oscillated between Poetry, Oratory and Didactics. There were also eclectic approaches of those who considered such texts as “writings of doubtful typifying” or “non-classifiable” [5]. All in all, precepts embraced journalism in their balance because its influence in the world of letters and undeniable, but their literary value was postponed to the last.In the last years of the 19th century, press men started to worry about the elaboration of manuals to explain how newspaper pieces should be composed, matter which Pacheco had already recommended in 1845, when he exhorted precepts to dedicate themselves to the study of the rules of journalistic writing [6]. Nonetheless, between 1891 and 1912, no one theorized about the relationships about Journalism and Literature, because the situation at that stage demanded to focus the attention on other matters, which corresponded to the changed experimented by journalism and its protagonist role in all aspects of life [7]. Journalism as a literary genre only provoked brief statements among some authors: “A literary genre is journalism”, firmly stated Minguijón (1908) with out supporting his opinion. And Mainar (1906) had already asked himself two years before: “In what literary genre should journalism be included? (…) Nothing more simple, in that one, in journalism, and, if much pressure is put on me, I will say more: in none or in all” [8]. Tangentially, theoreticians did insist on the fact that the informative profession should limit itself to expressing the truth, in contrast to what happened in the 19th century, times when it was common to mix fiction with reality (Rodríguez Rodríguez, 2009b). Journalists were demanded to be ocular witnesses of events. For this reason, the figure of the reported acquired a testimonial demand of a profession which had posed itself the task of adhering to the true stating of events. The first two thirds of the 20th century were dark times in the reflections about Journalism and Literature. It could be said that only Graña (in 1930) and González Ruiz (in 1940 and 1953) slightly dealt with that confluence in their attempt to describe and classify the types of texts published by the press. Those two authors distinguished journalistic compositions which call for the use of literature (the aesthetic resources of the language), and those which are apt for the coverage of themes of human interest, wrapping category of that which is literary, as it allows for deep thinking about the human condition. Nonetheless the other journalism manuals disregarded the matter [9]. Furthermore, starting on the seventies, two events which contributed towards the advancement of the studies about the links between the two cultural activities took place: the publication of Periodismo y literatura, the work of Acosta Montoro, who in 1973 started the greatest effort up until then to explain how Literature and Journalism “are like the branch and the trunk, that cannot live separately” (Acosta Montoro, 1973: t. 1, 51), and the incardination of the career of journalism in universities, from where authors such as Martín Vivaldi and Martínez Albertos set the bases for Journalistic as a scientific discipline in Spain. Since then, different Spanish authors have approximated themselves to the object of study from multiple perspectives, tending specially to the external characteristics of literary and journalistic compositions. However, as stated by López Pan and Rodríguez (2005: 224), very few researchers have asked themselves about the Literary journalism phenomenon [10], understanding it not as the literature of newspapers and journals, but as a macro genre which, under other genres, cringes together a set of texts which are Journalism and Literature at the same time. From the seventies and on, it is possible to distinguish two general tendencies: a) The one from those who establish substantial differences between Journalism and Literature, from the understanding that they are two different activities in their finality and with writing guidelines molded to their divergent purposes. Thus, according to these authors, the journalist elaborates news with a utilitarian aim (to inform a heterogeneous group in the most direct way), through a simple, clear and standardized language; while the man of letters does not have an instrumental objective; therefore, does not limit himself to current affairs, nor to reality. The writer of fictions creates a world with a language that is his, non-standardized and without limits. We find scholars such as Martínez Albertos (1992) and Aguilera (1988) in this line of thought, who deny the existence of a Literary journalism that brings together both cultural entities. From the field of Philology, both Lázaro Carreter (1977) as well as Coseriu (1990) also drew limits, basing themselves in formal aspects of journalistic and literary texts. b) The one from those who defend the unquestionable existence of a Literary Journalism which hybridizes both natures without losing the nuclear features of those two cultural entities. The author who started the most ambitious and serious work in this line of investigation in the Catalonian Albert Chillón, who since the eighties of the last century posed a discipline which he has called Journalistic-Literary Comparatism [11] to the academic community. It proposes to cover the its object of study from a multidisciplinary approach, a very promising perspective which involves a great variety of knowledge. Chillón
However, as it has been pointed out in the summary, a revision of the article “Communication, journalism and literature” published in 1960 by Antonio Gómez Alfaro in the Gaceta de la Prensa Española, re states the how and when multidisciplinary studies about this field of knowledge started in Spain, since the theses of this author were almost forty years ahead to the approach posed by Chillón in 1999 in his famous work Literatura y Periodismo. Una tradición de relaciones promiscuas. 4. An exceptional study in Spanish Journalism Antonio Gómez Alfaro [12] is the author who, in 1960, started the most ambitious reflection about the links between Journalism and Literature, in a stage when the speculations on this topic had approximated to that object of study basing themselves on professional and non university teaching experience on Journalism and Literature, which brought about as a result valuable contributions, but most of the time they were repetitive and paradoxical, maybe due to the lack of a systematized and detailed technique to theorize about the matter. Probably, the lack of an academic-university platform on which to support the training of researchers of Journalism, phenomenon which still was to come in the 1970s contributed to this. For this reason, the multidisciplinary treatment of this matter started by Gómez Alfaro constitutes a notable exception for his times and generation. His article “Communication, journalism and literature” (Gómez Alfaro, 1960) reaches and undisputable maturity which is evident in the novelty of the interdisciplinary approach, as a result of the author supporting himself in related academic scopes [13]: the Theory of literature (he refers himself, among others, to Aristotle, Wellek and Warren, Levin), Anthropology (Lewis Morgan), Linguistics, Philosophy (Figueiredo, Spengler, Unamuno, Ortega and Gasset, Jaspers), the Theory of Communication (Beneyto, Jacques Kaiser), la Estilística (Middleton, Martín Alonso, Palacio Valdés, Bruneau) and History (George Weill). Gómez Alfaro uses the deductive methods and begins by posing the convenience of substituting (influenced by current theories of mass communication [14]) the terms information and journalism for communication, word which, according to the author, is more related with the sociological content of the informative phenomenon; that is, communication involves the previous concept of human society, which, at the same time, determines the apparition of language as a means of communication among individuals who integrate it. From there he exposes the evolution of primitive language to verbal language, which leads in the apparition of grammar: a perceptive systems which constitutes the fundament of the art of writing: of Literature. He thus explains, after a detailed presentation – whose nuclear statements I will try to summarize later - that the hybridization between Journalism and Literature is better understood by their common origin. And concludes: “As far as communication and its being literary, there is a journalism [this, all in all, is “journalized communication”] that takes as his own expressive rules [the precept] of all literature, but with new shades” (Gómez Alfaro, 1960). With this postulate as the background for this reasoning, the authors wishes to respond to the question of whether journalism is a literary genre, and for such aim, he used modern genealogy, which supports his theories on convergence as aids (the reality-fiction duality, for instance) and form (style, message’s aim), entities which contribute towards determining the identification of each genre. He insists, of course, in the topic of disdain against journalism from men of letters. The greatest novelty comes in the posing he makes as to whether a literary journalism is possible; that is a journalism that is at the same time literature. And he further asks himself: Is literary journalism a special genre of literature? Similar questions that, in other socio cultural context, authors like Chillón (1999) and López Pan (2005) will make almost half a century after … Now we will try to synthesize the most important postulates made by Gómez Alfaro. 4.1. Reality and fiction are not opposed Gómez Alfaro states that the greatest problem seems to come from content –the what– of communication. The question about that what admits a dual answer: man can communicate real or fictional events; realities of fictions. Going back to the times when writing did not exist, he explains that man could transmit immediate realities, but which lacked historical rigor. With the invention of written word, histories managed to prevail, but this also forced for the composition or stories ordered by time; that is, the chronicle. This genre led to the apparition of the fictional chronicle, which allowed for the inclusion of mythic elements, based in the reality of the events. We are therefore before a primitive literary act which fusions reality and fiction (Gómez Alfaro: 6-7). After this historical dissertation, Gómez Alfaro fully boards the matter and sustains that “reality does not oppose to fiction”:
He adds that the same communication of real events, in journalism, always penetrates a fictional piece of data, because “the imperfection of he who communicates, from which expressive imperfection is a logical consequence, makes original events to be transformed, giving them a different shade in each concrete case” (Gómez Alfaro: 7). According to this hypothesis, the author’s personal circumstances modify the edges of the reality expressed, so that all writings, even journalistic ones, which try to be solely referential, are, in certain extent, fictional. In consequence, reality and fiction and involving concepts that mutually support one another in literary and journalistic creations [15]. 4.2. Why do men of letters disdain journalism? In regards to the image of the journalist, Gómez repeats what he has published in previous works (Rodríguez Rodríguez, 2009a): 1) Writers disdained men of letters who introduced themselves in the world of journalism because they limited their literary creativity to a task in which artistic freedom was reduced by the newspaper’s time and space limitations. 2) As news is seen as merchandize, the journalist becomes an employee of the informative company (from whom he receives a salary). This according to Gómez Alfaro, highlights the classical divorce between writer and journalist (Gómez Alfaro: 10, 15). Finally, regarding this topic, the author states:
4.3. Is Journalism a specific literary genre? Gómez Alfaro attempts two hypotheses to understand the literary journalism phenomenon. On one hand, he describes the writer’s historical evolution, and, on the other hand, he connects the theory of literary genres to the concepts of style and finality of each type of communication. As regards the first one, Gómez Alfaro states that the writer has performed a different role in each moment of the history of literature. And at a given moment, the apparition of newspaper press decisively influenced in his mental constitution, so he had to adapt to the demand of the new invention, creating a new literary modality. Thus we have the following process: 1) Having to live with the product of his industry, the writer first linked himself with those institutions that were able to economically sustain him: royalty and aristocracy, for instance. 2) Later sets himself free for this “slavery”, accepting the one from the editor or theater entrepreneur, who had organized a kind of “collective patronage”. 3) With the apparition of modern journalism, the writer finds in this activity an unsuspected economic source, but, given that journalism is immersed in a particular system of economic forces, these force him to adopt a posture: success in achieved by “flattering the majority of men”, “serving them an ideal” in the words of Unamuno. 4) The desire to free themselves from this submission made men of letters, who had to undergo the greatest sacrifices, to create “an artistic art of minorities”. Some who accepted newspapers as they were remained there. This is the reason why those few names that overcoming obstacles managed to imposed a special way of making journalism, completely dignified, are presented as splendid journalistic chimeras (Gómez Alfaro: 12). In second place, Gómez Alfaro, starting from the issue of the complexity to obtain universal rules which distinguish a type of journalism (given that it involves a growing quantity of heterogeneous compositions) explains that, together with language as a unifying elements of literary communication and journalistic communication (this is an essential piece of data “to include certain type of journalism” within the theory of literature”), the other fundamental aspect to characterize journalism is that it communicates “only events which constitute the present historical moment” [16]. It is also necessary to take into account, the style as far as technique of expression, since it is a constitutive part of verbal and written compositions. We therefore have that style in journalistic communication is strongly conditioned by two factors: the public it is directed to (widely heterogeneous) and the support on which it is published (which implies dailyness, haste and limited space). As consequence, according to Gómez Alfaro, journalism, by essence, limits its content to the transmission of data, which forces it to generate a singular technique of expression: the so-called journalistic style, which is molded according to the impositions of heterogeneity, quickness and space limitation. And therefore journalistic style is characterized by its accessibility (messages must be understood by the greatest number of people) and by impersonalization (the so-called objectivity of news). Gómez Alfaro does not argue this reality, but goes a step further in his argumentation and states that, even when informative style exists, not all texts that are published in the newspapers follow the perceptive rules for writing news. Therefore, the distinction between informative stylistic and a literary stylistic has to make a mandatory previous stop: the acceptance of the existence of diverse types of journalism, and Gómez –following Martín Alonso– considers two which are at the extremes: the informative and the ideological one. Each one embraces distinct expressive forms. Thus, the first one is more subdued to the strictness of news writing, and the second one allows for a literary freedom with greater limit that the space in the newspaper. Basing himself on the division proposed by Martín Alonso (1958) (who includes the news, headlines, information chronicle and report in the informative stylistic), Gómez Alfaro explains that within literary stylistic the article is contained and regarded as the genre which has had the most success in Spain due to its stylistic qualities; it is a genre in which (due to determined common features of style and composition) journalistic pieces such as the editorial, the literary chronicle, the collaboration article and the criticism can be framed. These texts–as other authors had already warned: Graña and González Ruiz– do not only wish to inform and orient, but, also, have a clear playful finality: an essential characteristic of literary communication. In summary, Gómez Alfaro states:
5. Conclusions If there was something to conclude, something which Gómez Alfaro does not do, these are, in my opinion, the ten key points of his central postulates: 1) Being literary genres central cultural institutions to which writers ascribe, it is possible to reform them and give birth to other ones, as the history of literature so demonstrates. Journalism has decisively intervened in that evolution, transforming genres known until then. 2) Identifies two postures in the dilemma of whether journalism is a literary genre: a) The one of those who consider journalism as a new literary genre different from others, with its own characteristics, and b) the one of those who in counter position breakdown the journalistic content, applying to each partial content the specific qualities of classical genres. 3) That which is journalistic is a nodal point where all theories converge, and paradoxically, it is there where the most opposite postures are originated: For some that which is journalistic is a precise piece of data, able to determine the existence of a concrete literary genre; for others, only traditional genres exist, which journalism specifically shades (Gómez Alfaro: 15). 4) States that the existence of a literary, journalistic genre which even when it linked to the rest of literary manifestations in terms of its first qualifier, in order to the second one it is also linked to the other journalistic communications. That is, it is possible to discover some facts which qualify literary journalism, as a special genre, although he recognizes that reaching the last consequences of this thesis is not simple, because there are no unique solutions established before hand. This does not keep him from stating that: What is journalistic, upon insisting on each communication (auditive, visual), grants its own contours to the phenomenon. When it insists on literary communication, this receives a special differentiating content which does not only cover the stylistic data, but which reaches up to the very concept of literary genre (Gómez Alfaro: 16). 5) An aspect which was not taken into account when analyzing journalistic communication is the fact that it is not enough for the text to be well written: it should also be well confectioned (typography, headlining, design in general), which leads to an issue of capital importance: visual projection of literary communication [17] 6) Journalism has given birth to a special literature (we are in 1960) of great success: travel literature, of “undeniable journalistic origin”. Also, journalistic genres which have embraced with most success literary modalities are four: the chronicle (“a major structure which embraces minor structures”), the report (which used the classical elements from the novel, such as the argument, the character, the composition, the scenic frame, etc.) and the interview-report (focused on the dialogue; that is, on the drama). The fourth one, I have already mentioned it in previous lines, is the article, a relative of the essay, which oscillates between pure fiction literature (let’s recall some of today’s columns) and the analysis of reality, but with a “literary breakdown without comparison in current literary manifestations” (Gómez Alfaro: 19-20). 7) The dual character of the relationships between journalism and literature is definite. Literature embraces journalism, a very distinct reality from that in which literature (literary history) turns into newspaper content (literary newspapers and sections in newspapers dedicated to literature). Gómez Alfaro highlights, precisely, the literary as a means of journalistic communication. 8) Newspapers and journals have been useful for the configuration of new literary genres. The short story occupies an outstanding place as son of the newspaper, but there are also the different types of brief narrations which were impelled by journals. 9) Journalism is an undisputable ally for the creation and strengthening of language, and this phenomenon has influenced on the language of literary communication, in the search for a greater likelihood, it lends elements to journalistic style. Furthermore, the growth of printed journalism has forced literature to pursue “the consecution of a climate of historical, documental transcendence, to its fictional plots”. An example of the first is constituted by the fact that literary language today must have a greater visual force: “It is not enough to tell scenes, you have to make the readers visualize them” (Gómez Alfaro: 21). 10) Closes his essay stating that literary communication will remain dominant over informative communication. For all which has been stated, we can reasonably deduce that Antonio Gómez Alfaro is the first theoretician in Spain who, not having other documental proves, inaugurated the modern studies on Journalism and Literature, putting together scientific rigor, methodological analysis, and multidisciplinary perspective, reality which solidly eliminates those affirmations which state that in the Hispanic world no in depth intellectual reflections were made about the macro genre of Literary journalism. His work “Communication, journalism and literature” constitute a true advancement for his times and as such it must be recognized in the Journalistic world. 6. Bibliography Acosta Montoro, J. (1973): Periodismo y literatura, Tomos I y II. Madrid, Guadarrama. Coseriu, E. (1990): “Información y literatura”, en Comunicación y Sociedad, volumen III, números 1 y 2, pp. 185–200. Chillón, Ll. A. (1999): Literatura y periodismo: Una tradición de relaciones promiscuas. Barcelona, Aldea Global, Servei de Publicacions Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. ---- y Kramer M. (1995): Literary Journalism. A New Collection of the Best American Non Fiction. Ballantine Books Inc. Tarín Iglesias, J. (1959): El periodismo de ayer y hoy. Barcelona, Editorial Políglota. Wolfe, T. (1973): The New Journalism. New York, Harper & Row. 7. Notes [1] Although the dissertation at the RAE took place in 1845, the publication of the text comes afterwards. Cfr. Pacheco, F. J. (1864): “On journalism in its relationships to literature”, in “Reception Discourse in the Spanish Real Academia June 1st, 1845”, in Literatura, Historia y Política, Volume I. Madrid, San Martín Bookshop. No record was kept of such discourse and in fact, the RAE thought it lost, reason why it is not compiled in the Catalogue of manuscripts published by the academy in 1991. The academic world thought it was lost, as acknowledged by Palenque in 1998. The discourse “lost” for 162 years, reappeared in 2007 (Cfr. Rodríguez Rodríguez, J.M.). Pacheco himself had edited it in an anthology of 1864, unknown by literary journalism scholars. [2] It must be taken into account that, in those times, both Journalism as well as Literature were consolidating their cultural identity. Even at the end of the 19th century some rhetorical and literary precepts considered any written text as literature, including those published in the press. However, towards the mid 19th century, and from professional practice, men of letters started to distinguish as literary texts with solely aesthetic purposes (formerly called poetic), and as journalist those of didactic, political and rhetorical character which were diffused by newspapers and magazines. Pacheco’s defense of journalism as a literary genre fights for the existence of texts with an utilitarian finality (not aesthetic) which, at the same time, could be considered as artistic, due to the mastery of their authors in the handling of words. [3] The most explicit reference comes from Calatayud and Bonmantí, Vicente (1890): La influencia de la prensa periódica en la cultura e ilustración de los pueblos, essay distinguished with an honorary mention at the contest celebrated in Alicante on August 7th, 1890. Alicante, Antonio Seva’s Press, in Espéculo, journal of literary studies, N° 12, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1999, on line: http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero12/calata0.html. Consultation made on July 22nd, 2004. In this essay the author makes harsh attacks against journalism. He tries to convince his readers that “journalism slaves thought, diminishes intelligence and degrades science, and decays literature”. It is later understood that he was interested in mentioning Pacheco’s discourse only to insult newspapers. [4] A detailed study of precursor discourses by Pacheco, Sellés, Fernández Flórez and Valera can be obtained in Rodríguez Rodríguez, J. M. (2007 and 2008). [5] Cfr. Rodríguez Rodríguez, J.M.: “The classification of journalism in rhetorical and literary precepts of Spanish 19th. Between disdain and perplexity”, in Textual & Visual Media, Number 2, Revista de la Sociedad Española de Periodística, pp. 235-246. Also see Salaverría Aliaga, R. (1998), Morales Sánchez, I. (1999) and García Tejera, M.C. (2006). [6] Pacheco sustained that the cataloguing of writing guidelines of journalist model compositions was fundamental for the perfecting of journalism, so that it would get rid of its “vulgarity” and could turn into a “work of art”, Cfr. Pacheco (1864: 191). [7] For instance, what is the social mission of the activity, what should the relationship between press, economical power and politics be like; the implications of conceiving journalism as an enterprise and, in consequence, as a lucrative activity, the convenience of including or not including journalism in university studies, the issue of scanty salaries of journalists, etc. [8] A pragmatic and perplex answer, but which contains more than just that apparent simplicity, since, on one hand defends the autonomy of journalism as an activity emancipated from literature, but, at the same time, seems to grant that, as support and means of embracing and diffusing all modalities of written expression, journalism adopts as many literary forms as there are. Cfr. Mainar, R. (1906): El arte del periodista. Barcelona, Sucesores de Manuel Soler, Editors, p. 84. [9] These works are: Ungría, A. (1930): Grandeza y servidumbre de la prensa. España Editorial, Madrid; Álvarez Calvo (1937), J.: El periodismo en Barcelona. Barcelona, Juan Graphics; Prados and López (1943), M.: Ética y Estética del periodismo español. Madrid: Espasa Calpe; Daranas, M. (1947): El periodismo, profesión social. Madrid Escuela Social; Tarín Iglesias, J. (1959): El periodismo de ayer y hoy. Barcelona, Políglota Editorial; Amestoy, A. (1963): El reportero. Madrid, Rialp; and Vigil Vásquez, M. (1972): El oficio del periodista. Barcelona, Dopesa, [10] Chillón warns of this reality when he states: “The studies about the relationships about journalism and literature have been disperse and occasional, impressionistic and in general, lack rigor”. See Chillón, L.A. (1999): Literatura y periodismo: Una tradición de relaciones promiscuas. Bellaterra, Aldea Global, Servei de Publicacions Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, p. 395. In contrast with this scarcity, there are many investigations about literary journalism in the Anglo-Saxon scope both in England as well as in the United States, specially in this last country, where there are great exponents of the macro genre in the practical and speculative facets. The most emblematic works belong to Wolfe, Sims and Kramer, although there are also outstanding contemporary authors. To avoid a long list, a bibliographical compiling of the most fundamental books in English has been left for the bibliography section, according to my opinion. [11] His fundamental book Literatura y periodismo: Una tradición de relaciones promiscuas, published in 1999, although Chillón had already had already sketched the master lines of his work in the book Periodismo informativo de creación, jointly published with Sebastiá Bernal in 1985. [12] Antonio Gómez Alfaro, Ph. D. in Law and Ph. D. in Information Sciences by the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, and expert on Criminology by that same University. Has developed a prolific professional career in the world of journalism, parallel to researching and compiling abundant historical documentation about the gypsy people and their culture. [13] Is the only author in the field of journalism who, until the apparition of this article, constantly uses foot note bibliographical references, and a list of the worlds used for its study at the end of the essay, all of which allows for an easy documenting of his influences. [14] The influence of Juan Beneyto is specially noted, who by that time (exactly in 1957) had published Mass communication: un panorama de los medios de comunicación en la sociedad moderna, Madrid: Institute of Political Studies. [15] From what is stated, the author deduces the existence of a double aspect within the concept of reality: “On one hand, the pure fact, and the pure historical action; on the other, the same history in its human prospecting, matrix cell of fiction”. He expressed that, from this duplicity of aspects, journalism is only concerned with reality as history, and, this, as a set of news. Therefore, “pursuits the entity of what is historical as what exists is real, the ta genoma of the classical Aristotle distinction”, Cfr. Ibíd. p. 8. [16] Cfr. Rodríguez Rodríguez, J.M. and Angulo Egea, M. (2009): “Literatura y periodismo: El origen del desprecio. Los hombres de letras y los hombres públicos”, in Retos del periodismo digital. Reflexiones desde la Universidad. Huesca, Asociación de la Prensa de Aragón, pp. 202-211. [17] The author says that this gets to such a point that there are writers who consider headlines as a special literary genre, solely journalistic. |
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