'Killing the Director', by Bru Rovira: a catharsis against the decadence of the media

The journalist Bru Rovira was for years one of the great war correspondents of the Spanish press, which before the great recession of 2008 had little to envy of the international coverage of the best media in the world.

The crisis triggered by the global financial

crash

especially affected the media industry, which was very disoriented by the bankruptcy of its traditional business model, but in Spain it was even more brutal: the sector was particularly over-indebted, more backward in the search for new sources of income and with a very widespread drive in companies to get rid of veteran journalists, forged in a responsive culture and in many cases with roots in the imagination of May 68, which some Managers were determined to remove them from the newsrooms no matter what the cost.

They took advantage of the crisis to get rid of them.

At that time, many newspapers fired some of their best journalists with many good years ahead of them, a phenomenon that also affected EL PAÍS, and which Bru Rovira suffered in

La Vanguardia

.

Now, the historic war correspondent of the great Barcelona newspaper uses a detective novel to avenge, with more irony and humor than acrimony, an entire generation that retired early and settle scores with the managers who committed the crime without seeming to care. in the least the decapitalization of the newsrooms nor the increasingly weak capacity of journalism to confront the abuses of power.

In the book, sub-inspector Matilda Serra, a former war reporter in Bosnia and somehow the author's

alter ego

, must solve the strange murder of a powerful newspaper editor, who despite being a fictional character evokes José Antich, the former director of

La Vanguardia

who forced the premature departure of the newspaper's old guard and who today directs

El Nacional,

a media group close to Carles Puigdemont.

The story denounces the connection between economic, political and media power, often with unspeakable underworlds of corruption.

In this story, the plot itself is almost the least important thing: the most interesting thing is the portrait of the decline of the media - a trend that fortunately seems on the way to reversing to the extent that new sources of income are being consolidated, such as digital subscriptions—as well as the connection between economic, political and media power, often with unspeakable underworlds of corruption.

The book is also a tribute to the losers: to the plebeian and libertarian Barcelona where the action takes place, with its epicenter in the Raval neighborhood, in obvious retreat from the modernity of mass tourism and the advance of capital, and also to a certain way of seeing and living journalism that is on the way to extinction in the face of the technological revolution and the precariousness of the sector.

Some references from the old journalistic school even appear in cameos, such as the much-missed José Martí Gómez and Ramón Lobo, who sometimes serve the author to disseminate professional maxims.

In all likelihood, Ramón Lobo, who died in 2023 and a great friend of the author, would be shocked not only by the many journalistic winks in the book, but in particular by the savage and macabre method used to kill the director in the novel.

In fact, the imaginary scene even precedes the book: it represents a catharsis before an entire ominous era of the press in this country and a magnificent excuse to build a novel around it that is also the testament of an era that will not return.

Look for it in your bookstore

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