Back when there wasn’t much profusion of videos, just TV, the big job of describing realities through newspapers actually rendered journalists with no other option than display their uttermost skills on graphing things out through the written word.
Non-fiction literature exponents, excellent chronicles and outstanding reports, were what contributed to the transmitting of specific details and vibes of an episode, giving a rough and good enough idea of such human climates in which everything occurred, thus allowing readers to feel they’re stepping onto these scenarios almost as a witnesses.
Reporters had to have a “photographic eye” to perceive and capture intangibles and “show off” to the public what had happened, and although such journalists stood out for their mastery on the rules of storytelling, I can say most of them also stood out at redacting text.
The text genre hasn’t lost its validity or importance, but citizens have many more opportunities nowadays to see the news episodes with their own eyes. This applies on very large scales thanks to the audiovisuals that dominate the world of digital communications on digital and social networks.
This custom, because that’s what it can be called, is the factor that marks the audiovisual bias both information and misinformation of today. Images and narrations lie on the resources of podcasts and storytellings, which have become the formats that wide audiences do prefer.
The text, that group of grammar signs and symbols that founded written language and that’s been the basis of learning, communication and information, is now waging a fierce battle not to fully succumb to the audiovisual language.
A novelty that challenges the imagination and creativity of the printed media to appeal to resources that give life and realism to the news in a world that prefers to “see and hear” rather than read.
- Translated from Spanish by Randy Rodriguez.
Director's Thoughts 