"I don't want to be a journalist," decreed in 2018 the girl in some class of that subject who, averaging a degree in Communication, challenges to do graphic journalism. By that time, the media is the subject of study and going "across the counter" can be a bit frustrating.
Faculty of Social Sciences of the UBA - Headquarters: Constitution. Photo: Luciano Thieberger.
I have been teaching a journalism subject for 25 years in a degree course that is not called journalism. And yet, many of the best Argentine professionals came and went out of those classrooms. It was like that in the 80s, when classes were held in a building on Callao Avenue and when they moved in the 90s to a building crammed over Marcelo T. De Alvear.
Later, classes moved to a mass overlooking the beautiful Centennial Park and now, in the spacious former factory of Constitución. Also here, every March, girls and boys who do not exceed 22, explain to me that no, they do not want to be journalists.
Sometimes it happens that they do want to. A little before the pandemic, a handful of girls and boys, who were studying together, were defiantly enthusiastic. They wanted to know everything, they wanted to disassemble and reassemble each note, they wanted to improve the failed texts, but they also rewrote those that were approved.
23-05-2022 - Buenos Aires - Cities - Faculty of Social Sciences of the UBA - Venue: Constitución. Photo: Luciano Thieberger.
Of excellence
They were the best hours spent as a teacher: everyone today does journalism of excellence. Not journalism like the one I do or like the one I like. And that is just the most touching thing: that they took from those classes what helped them to invent something different and their own, which builds a more responsible and informed citizenship.
In a pandemic, virtuality took us away. Doing journalism from a living room or a bedroom was not easy. But Juliana put together a memorable story about radio wave seekers and Victoria composed a beautiful profile about "the kid of the flags", of Tigre.
Because you can learn the technique, you can know the mechanisms and train the look. But there is a moment when journalism chooses its own.
Faculty of Social Sciences of the UBA - Headquarters: Constitution. Photo: Luciano Thieberger.
The mutation of the commercial matrix of the media, technological hybridization, the shrinking of budgets and the collapse of salaries are not incentives to launch into this task. But there are trades that know how to wait for the right people.
"I don't want to be a journalist," decreed the girl who is now a talented editor. She didn't know it then, but good journalism was already nesting in her even in that class of 2018.
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Lorena Vega, against the mandates
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Democracy told for boys
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