The time has come for the traditional formats of writing that, despite the omens, remain healthy - books, magazines, newspapers - to seek new strategies to refresh the relationship with readers.
The expected transition from paper to screen of the newspaper
Ámbito Financiero
is a notable incident because it is
a newspaper that contemporary Argentina has been able to follow from its birth, its success and subsequent destiny
.
The experience ends up serving as a laboratory of processes and behaviors that allows us to understand, without getting confused, the pillars of the professional task.
The first, that the owners of the newspapers are not the companies that have them registered.
They are the readers
.
And readers follow their diaries in all the transitions they experience.
They read them on paper or on screens with a fidelity that is moving.
This is the reason why the mastheads of legacy newspapers (the
legacy media
, pre-existing in the digital era) continue to preserve, in their digital format, the cutting edge of information.
The second pillar is that, on paper and on screen, the newspaper is
a commitment to the professional task of the journalist
.
A dialogue from a classic film about newspaper editorials defines that commitment.
“- Are you a journalist or reporter?
- What is the difference?
- The journalist becomes the hero of the story;
the reporter is only the witness”
(Deadline, United States, 1949, the protagonist is Humphrey Bogart as a prototype of the editorial animal; can be seen on YouTube).
Those media that have been clear about where their mission is and that have found the appropriate strategies, overcome the wounds of the transition.
The paid digital subscription brands that have reached cutting-edge media in the transformation, such as The New York Times or
Clarín
, are proof that, if the newspaper does not sacrifice the mission, it will not shipwreck in the digital ocean.
When a news event moves society, the impulse to search for the news is poured onto the screen, but the information that prevails is that provided by the header of a traditional newspaper.
The third pillar is the political mission of a newspaper.
The newspapers were all born as part of a political program, identified with the agenda of modernity.
They articulated
the encyclopedic utopia
that there would be no more secret knowledge in a universally literate society with tools to express itself and receive information freely.
That is what is protected by the constitutional clauses that protect the task, which is always militant in the noble sense of
challenging power and being the voice of those who do not have one
.
The commercial distraction of offering entertainment or ideology misappropriates that program that is inherent to every newspaper.
The original program may be partisan, as occurred in the birth of the large newspapers, but the newspapers conquered time when they maintained the objectives of freedom, criticism of power and defense of the public interest.
This pillar turns into a hoax the
attempt of some regimes to set up official media
that defends power - the “giornalismo di regime” that Oriana Fallaci denounced in dictatorial Argentina.
By the way, an official of this Government - who honors his last name - laughed these days at the “nonsense” of a ministry buying paper newspapers.
As if reading them on the screen was free.
Print media are the ones that invest the most in quality journalism, in numerous and varied newsrooms that allow them to maintain audiences that consider them trustworthy.
It is no small thing in a world of growing misinformation and polarizing messages that multiply on digital platforms and social networks.
How much of this could be affected by the digital transition of a newspaper?
Nothing.
As is the case with books – to which death has been prophesied a while ago, and continue to enjoy good health – more and more titles are being published, there are more readers and they continue to be at the center of the construction of the collective imagination of societies.
Of course the platform changes, of course it changes who does the business.
But the pillars of the mission resist the change of platform.
It does not undermine the mission that some alternative platforms break the advertising equation that supported paper newspapers.
“The media, which do journalism, saw their participation in the advertising market decline - said Martín Etchevers, president of Adepa -.
And two global giants, which do not produce content, were left with more than 80% of the only advertising that is growing, digital advertising.”
The habit does not make the monk
nor does the paper define a newspaper
.
It makes it fulfill the objective, which is to do journalism, to build stories.
Whether the reader receives them in paper format or on screens does not affect the purpose of journalism: to construct reality from a personal perspective – that of the company that animates it, that of the one who writes, that of the one who reads.
Roberto García, one of the builders of the newspaper as journalistic director in the best moment, ironically over my shoulder: “Curious that the deceased is remembered for what he did before and not for what he did now.”
The paper habit housed the beginnings of
Julio Ramos's successful company
, which went from being a financial market newsletter to a medium that helped transform the substance and form of the activity.
He used to say that the best thing for a newspaper was not to have presses.
He supported this decision, and referred it to Jacobo Timerman.
The growth of the company broke that prejudice and ended up having an important graph, a victim of the digital transition announced by the newspaper Ámbito Financiero.
What it could have contributed, of course, is not because of the paper on which it was printed.
He contributed because he left behind the era of the “prestige” press and
brought the coverage closer to the street
.
It was a sophisticated diary with popular clothing.
The motto was to write deeply, but with a plain style, to reach everyone.
It was a newspaper run by its own owners: Ramos answered readers' calls in person and everyone's obligation was to attend to them.
“For one who calls, there are a hundred who do not call, but they read us.”
It changed the way the financial world was covered, it renewed journalistic prose, it told the intimacy of politics, it provided a new vision of the political class, which other media adopted, and it innovated in the cultural industries.
Everyone created their version of
Charlas de Quincho
, which they maintain to this day.
It was a
hotbed
of journalists who populated all the media and brought changes.
He fought against the concentration of newspaper distribution.
He innovated in street marketing by installing the first automatic machines for selling newspapers.
He inaugurated one of the first web editions in 1995, when the “WWW” (World Wide Web) format was barely known.
It was a model of a successful journalistic company that gave money to its businessmen.
It was the first medium adapted to the technical conditions of its time: small and specialized editorial staff, multifunction journalists who wrote about everything and every day, prepared and cultured, many with university training and international experience.
Non-unionized editorial staff protected by the company, well paid and recognized for their efforts.
He innovated before anyone else in satellite journalism, with local editions that were distributed throughout the country and in Uruguay at the same time as in CABA, when no one else did, and he developed the first national chain of newspapers with La Mañana del Sur (Neuquén and Río Negro) and La Mañana de Córdoba.
*The author was a journalist from Ámbito Financiero
D.S.