Idea Journalism

Know how to think
Make others think
And let others think

Idea Journalism
Miguel Pérez Gaudio

Miguel Argentino Pérez Gaudio

• Professional Journalist (1957)
• Specialized columnist.
• Director of Radio and Television
Programmes.
• Director and Founder of “Aquí y
Ahora” Magazine (1969- 1975).
• Founder and Principal of the
Journalism University College
“Obispo Trejo y Sanabria” (1971- )
• Journalism Professor.
• Creator of Critical Analysis
Methods: Intercepting Module of
Manipulations (IMM) and I See You
Viewer and Advisor.
• Director of Critical Formation
Courses.
• Founder and Director of Media,
“Cura Brochero” Radio and
Argentinean New Television.
• Publications’ Author.
• International Expert with the
support of UNESCO.
• Director of the First National
Research about Health Issues
Related to Substances
Consumption; these results have
not been published yet.
• Campaign creative “Make All
Human Rights Credible” (2000) for
the National Ombudsman.
• Director of Social Research “Work
and Power for Cordoba” (2001)

PI 2

Miguel PEREZ GAUDIO Idea Journalism
Know how to think-Make others think-And let others
think

Edited by Journalism and Social Sciences University
Foundation
Cordoba, Argentina.
Design: Juan P. Gaudio
Style Correction: Maria Isabel Robles

Copyright by Journalism and Social Sciences University
Foundation
Ituzaingo 249- 5000 Cordoba- Argentina
Telephone- Fax (0351) 4230340/ 4247278 – email:
espotys@arnet.com.ar

No whole or part of this book may be reproduced by
any means.

Legal deposit made 11.723
SBN 950-9979716

Original edition: 1976
New version 2001

Printed by Graphic Workshop Pugliese Siena
Sarachaga 122- Cordoba

PI 3

Not ever has the world had as many means to
communicate ideas as it has today, but never
has the world lack ideas to communicate as it
lacks today

PI 5

Mister/Ms
Human Being
Protagonist of news
Whoever you are. Wherever you are

This lines that introduce the “Idea
Journalism”, recognize its pilgrimage to the
anonymous and varied readers.
You, whoever you are, have been chosen as
an inspiration and as a key for “Idea
Journalism”. It is our aim – almost an
obsession- to reinstall Men in the center of
social communication of information and the
process of history.

Miguel Perez Gaudio

PI 6

Silent and Silenced News

Watching carefully today’s men psychology is
enough to realize that it is soaked in bitterness and
skepticism.
A moan, almost as a prophecy, lurks around the
world to denounce a growth of inner human
suffering along with the growth of the supremacy
of material wealth and technology, and hunger of
cultural and spiritual wealth. Misery, pain,
disappointment, suffering seem to spread all
around the world; instead of receding due to the
peaceful joy that so many progress goods bring us.
When we enter the third millennium of humanity,
this is expressed in the paradigms of globalization.

Changing time, time of change

The changing time is characterized by
“globalization”. There are many hidden contents
and ambiguities in this word that deeply affect our
way to interpret the life and the world.
Globalization affects every social aspect, from
economy to politics, from religion to education.

PI 7

In this globalized world, there is not a fair
balance between those who have it all and
those who have little or nothing. We do not talk
about “outcasts” anymore; there is a new
category: the excluded without face, without
voice, without name, without history…
It is the world- market that tends to an only
thought. Globalization also involves a
concentration of media in a few hands; and the
manipulation of people’s thoughts and criteria.
This revealing synthesis, as gloomy
anthropological, human and social news,
involves mainly media moguls, referents,
and leaders; both traditional ones and new
ones. We can even say that they are trapped
and demanded for answers: what is their
responsibility for today’s man psychology? And,
which engages particularly professional and
academic journalism duty?
Many answers and statements can be offered,
but in the end and in relation with the truth, we
can accept the blame for that “moan” that lurks
around the world.
That this responsibility is more hidden is
dramatic and puzzling. This brings about
pressure, struggle and uncontained neutrality in
the use of social communication, and they
extend as a restricted and unaccountable
continuous agreement.
The dizzy pace of history makes it hard for man
to keep track of it, in the middle of a reality
that is defined by an amused civilization. A
civilization amused by the technological
development and control; that contradicts itself
because of the uncontrolled existential crisis,
the manipulation and the fear of conflicts. In
this reality, local and international media walk
the paths of the sad and fleeting jingoism of
sensory, spectacular or superficial effects. As
regards journalism, it is conditioned to the

PI 8

terrible routine of senseless communication in
order to keep or catch an audience.
With the journalism skills for massive
communication, such as attractive writing or
lecturing, witty or synthesis capacity, along
with graphic and audiovisual art and the new
digital and multimedia techniques; we can
harmonize and limit competitiveness to the
density in information, to the sarcastic,
deceitful or subtle, to its charming, catching or
Confrontations
With the journalism skills for massive
communication, such as attractive writing or
lecturing, witty or synthesis capacity, along
with graphic and audiovisual art and the new
digital and multimedia techniques; we can
harmonize and limit competitiveness to the
density in information, to the sarcastic,
deceitful or subtle, to its charming, catching or
sensationalist presentation; leaving aside the
required meaning in order to release pressure
on today’s man, and to express higher
contents.

It is necessary to discover what is essential in
this matter – convincing reasons- and be able
to turn the tendencies and jingoistic limits into
transcending, necessary, fascinating
achievements, creatively unlimited.
What has journalism achieved that can be
considered as social and human science?
Which are its great novelties, capable of being
supported by principles, theories and methods?
Maybe it is about time, in this third millennium
to look for other ways, to recreate with
prestige, empowering the wealth of its endless

PI 9

Journalism that engages as a Science of
Information can not only voice the
human blackouts without lighting them
up; communicate catastrophes and
then abandon them; start changes that
ignores; get into the anguish of porn
without knowing how to break it down;
cling to ultraconservatism, stretching
out between stakes the history of
humanity itself.

Challenges

resources and transmit them when using the
media in order to get a main, competitive place
worthy as a social science and to be service of
humanity.
This is the challenge for institutions that train
professionals and thinkers.

“Idea Journalism” wants to take the challenge
from its school in this changing time and time
of change.

PI 10

TOPIC: PRIMARY FACTS (origin, character, components) method
DEVELOPMENT OF IDEA JOURNALISM steps

SOCIETY- TREND
1 analysis- area - covering

FAMILIARIZING
2 documentation - objective

INWARDNESS
3 sense - objective

RETURN TO SOCIETY
4 SUPPORTING THE NEWS
mean- genre – space
length - sequence

MESSAGES TO SOCIETY
5
MESSAGE INFORMATION PEDAGOGY
(INFORMATION- CULTURE – PROMOTION)
inform – educate – guide
make others think – promote

JOURNALISTIC DISCOURSES
6 IN THE NEWS- MESSAGE
indicative shape data

RESULT CONTROL
7 foreseeable course and effect

People the same as artworks, when they are introduced for the first
time, must be identified. “Idea Journalism” does it with a method that
is defended as instrument, linking journalism, science, culture and
promotion to the service of human beings, that we aspire to reinstall
as the center of news and history, in its relation with social
communication.
The layout of this book is not controversial; however, confrontation
with the facts of the matter and with other ideas about it is
controversial.

PI 11

Journalism in Social Sciences

Sense
A deep thought of Francis Bacon * suggests:
“Among those who make a living out of knowledge
there are some that, hearing only the experience,
do not know other than collecting and gathering
facts: they are the ants of science. Others, on the
contrary, do not listen to other but reason, and
build up systems with abstractions of the spirit;
they are the spiders. The same as bees that collect
pollen of flowers to elaborate it and transform it;
real wisdom consults and enquires the cultural
history and the experience; and then interprets
and explains its facts in the light of principles and
reasoning. It is precisely in the junction of these
two elements and in the simultaneous application
of experience and principles, where true science
hope is.”

The Media Confrontations

Inexcusably and in essence, Social Communication
Media in all its context, characteristics and form of
*Bacon, Francis. English philosopher, writer and politician. He knew how

d News
PI 12
insertion in the life of people, by its nature and
manifestations, turn into instruments of service
and public welfare. With this premise they must
therefore establish their roles, duties and
rights.
They are Media: mere public instruments of
professional mediation and not ends in
themselves. The main aims – permanent and
superior- are verified by the intelligence, quality
and humanity of the service they compulsory
provide to society. By natural and legal rights,
society determines the aims.
Instrumental media are the source. Service to
society is the aim and objective of its works.
They are Massive: social communications are
offered publicly, and they give media its
massive characteristic due to the unlimited
potential range with which they are established
within all society – local, national or
international- without any chance of making
distinctions of groups or people, classes or age,
culture or quality. They specifically include radio
and television broadcasters. Society receive
their transmission at no charge or paying
agreed fees; newspapers and magazines,
agencies and other new technology or more
recent means, as the internet.
They are different from other means that, even
serving the purpose of transmission, are
dominated as selective on purpose, when they
aim at an identified, specific and consciously
determined public, or when they are announced
with a clear and precise objective, tendency or
ideology that is held by its owners or
manipulators.
They are of Communication: it is their
mission to spread professionally all that is
trusted to their mediation, by means of
language and techniques in order to satisfy
society’s needs and expectations for common
welfare making social dialogue possible.
They are Social: when communications are

PI 13

eminently public and unlimitedly horizontal,
they disregard the idea that aims and interests
of owners – direct and indirect- and of
operators are imposed to those of society. On
the contrary, they must be conditioned to the
main and permanent aims of society.
This social relationship, demanded by the public
and tutelary condition of communications, is
both a right and duty that is respected and an
opportunity that is defended. This is lost when
the acknowledgment of that main social
gravitation is omitted, or when an abuse is
committed with impunity at the time social
communication takes place.

Journalistic Leadership
Within this context we must specify in a
particular way, the mission trusted only to
professional skill and journalism practice. In
other words, to the processing of information in
its different manifestations, formats and styles,
whatever means this is done.
There is an explicit examination that establishes
and determines professional skill of journalism
when handling information by Media, providing
society with an implicitly contractual service
that demands and gathers conditions, qualities
and ways.
For journalism to be able to inform, it has to be
informed, defining two moments: search for
and/or select information; and treat and
transmit that info through its specific
languages. Search and/or selection and
transmission can not be reduced to
unanimated, unconscious, superficial, routine or
random tasks. On the contrary, information
represents an intellectual, moral and spiritual
support, necessary for every man’s
development in society. It allows society to
update about the events that reverts to its own
and from it to the community’s public opinion –
society.

d News
PI 14
This journalistic responsibility- professional
role, opportunity gift and use of means- can not
be reduced and limited to a secondary
participation. For example, gather, repeat and
broadcast information only linked by syntax,
but fragmenting and disregarding its
informative substantial qualities: truthfulness,
objectivity and validity. This implies framing
journalism in something more than a stagnated
style that turns monotonous, systematic and
dangerous; limiting the role of information to
the application of a basic frame that responds
to what happened, when, how, where or who,
without getting ethically and culturally involved.
“Idea Journalism” questions this tendency.
Actually, any person with a little training –
whether being journalist or not- is able to
report news, bringing into line the classic
questionnaire mentioned above.
This observation warns that giving data or
linking data syntactically as information is not
performing the contemporary role that engages
professional journalists.
Journalism, being the only professionalized
resort to validate and enhance information by
the Media, is the one that has to select and
give it the treatment to make us think, covering
one of the most relevant layers in the process
of society and in men’s lives.
If information comes from the summary of
journalistic methodological technique, the
objective vision of events and the subjective
gravitation inherent to human behavior, with all
its influential manifestations increased by the
constant penetration of media, its worth
recognizing them as intellectual, moral and
spiritual component of people’s lives, therefore
of society: they shape the updating budget and
humanity’s criteria.

PI 15

Reference Investigations

To formulate “Idea Journalism”, it was necessary to
investigate hard and fairly journalistic behavior
along these latest years, using methods of logical
test and common sense. Two configurations arose:
“system” and “anonymous”.

I. Why “SYSTEM * journalism”

a) Because its most systematic productions suffer
from severe methodological deficiencies as regards
the way they select, treat, make and present the
news. Sustaining this in a stable and constant way,
it turns into a one sense only and dominating
vertical “system”.
b) These tendencies are present in very varied
Media, according to conceptual levels and political
tendencies and behaviors.
c) This allows us to infer that in the classes and
structures of professional journalists’ formation,
the similar tendency validates dominating
“systems” and validates methods or practices for
the treatment, making and presentation of news.
Or it goes with theories, which are not based on
*System: is an organization that includes all relevant moments, in a way

d News
PI 16
operative transferences, and turn them into
inflationary theories.
c) Consequently, in professional production,
ancient guidelines outlast, without great
variations except for rhetorical variations that
affect technical vocabulary with new
substituting or clarifying roles terminologies,
which do not modify it.
e) At the same time, binding corporations such
as international organizations of consensus do
not offer determining changes, except for
political speeches. An evidence of this is what is
seen when we deeply analyze national policies
of social communications or corporative
perspectives or binding organisms’ reports and
at the same time their own inefficiency.
f) The overview presented by professional
journalists’ organizations and media moguls is
not different. They do not outstand as updated
and transforming vanguards for scientific,
methodological and deontological projects,
since they only proceed on the basis of their
corporative interests.

II. Why “ANONYMOUS* journalism”

In analyzed journalistic productions, journalists
are forced – and at the same time they accept
it like that- to do a routine job that hides its
eminently professional character and
unconsciously they neglect their productions
under protection of anonym and impunity. This
way they mutilate the huge potential that as
responsible authors and creators would allow
them treat, make and finally present the news.
Sample, verification and analysis give many
guidelines and references, some permanent
other innovative that make us confirm and
establish that:

*Anonymous: everyone and anyone.

PI 17

1°) Journalism by culture, habit and necessity,
is irreplaceable in the democratic life of society,
but at the same time, as new techniques are
incorporated to their material resources of
infrastructure, means and technologies, it
becomes more encircling and its influence more
conditioning of society’s habits and culture.
2°) If it reaches a greater level of penetration,
it has to respond to that with a more engaged
level of responsibility. There must be present
the new conditions that ensure simultaneity
between media progress and technological
excitement, and quality progress of that is
broadcasted; in this case, the news.
However, from the journalistic behavior
analyzed arouse contradictions:
a) Universal society is shaken by a
greater amount of news, among the increasing
broadcasting and reception possibilities, but
there is less responsibility in its selection and
qualitative treatment;
b) Inadequacy of the professional staff
that has to manage information – in a lower
amount of that required by a greater
broadcasting and reception- and their not
always updated training – rather individualistic
– diminish the importance, complicate and spoil
the quality of news treatment; with this the
problem worsen.
From this diagnoses “Idea Journalism” states
for professional discipline the following
principles:

Journalism universality
Responsible objectivity
Restoring of man as the center of information
Journalism profession and social science.

PI 18

Principles of Idea Journalism

Universality
Human family, intrinsically universal, needs more
that ever before of communication towards the
strengthening of peoples’ interrelation. This
depends mainly on media.
When its admirable technical resources – image
and sound communication satellites, increasing
number of teletype, telex, mobile phone, fax,
photo-teletype lines, computing network- connect
with the massive broadcasting platforms, which are
the local, national and international media,
formulate, in joint effort, a great opening to all
men that are assisted by television, radio,
newspaper and Internet communications.
Those who make possible all dynamic for that
communication of universal cohabitation are called
addressors or social communicators. They, in one
way or another, transmit culture and shorten
distances between the most diverse communities.
Due to this determining function, their professions
must be recognized as the main right-duty and
universal service.

PI 19

In the case of journalism, being in fact a local
service in every place that it is practiced; by its
role, it is open to all humanity and even obliged
for the globalization gravitation and the new
technologies that feed back and determine
news’ universality.
There are no doubts now that technological
progress has solved the extension and
immediate traffic of news. What must be cared
for almost simultaneously is to resolve what to
do with so much information; taking care of its
qualities to avoid distortions, inequality, and
that globalization turned into ideology and
system of power for human thought
manipulation.
Actually, it is not appropriate to say that this
has been achieved yet, but we are on that
direction.
News has reached greater irradiation and
penetration due to technological conquests, but
new questions arouse:
Are they mere rhetorical products to make
easier and more effective the quantitative
business of news?
Is it about improving life quality, or is
technology used just to condition it, misleading
public opinion more easily?
Is it just a technological evolution that turns
out of control because is not accompanied by a
dynamic in news quality?
The universality sense, therefore, make us
verify and even denounce partiality of
technological-quantity progresses without ethic-
cultural simultaneity in all their manifestations.
It is appropriate then to ask: irradiate more,
what for?
Therefore, the sense of universality in
journalism consists in being aware of the great
opening to all men in the universe through the
techniques, and incorporate selection and
quality criteria that justify this universality
when making news.

d News
PI 20
Responsible Objectivity
Recognizing and establishing journalism as a
profession for universal service, it must validate
through responsible objectivity to practice the
right to manage news and comply with the duty
to do it with truth, validity and credibility.
Responsible objectivity is sustained with
objective truth, appreciated with critical
distance, according to the rules of logic, of
principles and social experience, with
methodological and methodic supports.
Idea Journalism proposes them.
Making news ideological, forces objectivity;
when events, context and processes’ selection
and treatment are manipulated, subduing them
to political, economic, cultural interests.

Restoring Man in the center of information

News in the journalistic process cannot do other
than assisting man and society, always that we
understand assisting as an objective and
industrious search for the truth.
There are some that wrongly sustain that we
have to give people what they want in order to
please them, even acknowledging that we are
not giving always the best; but treating them
as objects. Who can seriously determine what
people want? Is not it more important to know
them and discover what is really useful and
necessary for them?
In the case of news, only the truth is supreme.
Every arrangement or instrumentation of truth
to distort it, or every omission on purpose is a
direct aggression to man’s freedom and dignity.
This worsens when media is used for this.
Media reaches a huge, heterogeneous and
anonymous audience.
In a small circle of people, the effect of a piece

PI 21

of news that is given deliberately or
unconsciously distorted can be corrected
because communication is direct and under
control. But through Mass Media, the effect is
unpredictable.
The belief about who are the truth and news
real owners is frequently incorrect.
Media owners or operators may believe that
practicing the power of managing information
gives rights to them, but never the right to
appropriation of the truth. The truth does not
become private through social mediation.
The rightful owner of information, with
exclusive and excluding rights, is every man, all
men and every man that constitute humanity.
That is why is appropriate, for the common
welfare, to preserve that social right, fragile
and unclearly settled in Human Rights and
Constitutions.
In the universe – even though unfortunately is
still the same in theory- it is said and
recognized that the truth must be guaranteed
to public opinion, society and men.
It cannot be understood or practiced in another
way, since information –as it is being sustained
in this proposal- is an intellectual, moral and
spiritual support, essential for men’s life. And in
the same way nobody can encourage genocide,
by any means, as regards men’s physical
integrity –human history verdict-, we cannot
pretend intellectual, moral and spiritual
genocide either, whatever refined ways to try
this against humanity.
News, being a vital intellectual support, cannot
be altered in their basic principles and even in
their shapes. It is not news, freedom of speech
or truth that are finally violated, but it is men’s
integrity that is at risk; that as they cannot
grow biologically healthy with contaminated
materials, or preserve and lengthen their
healthy lives with adulterated medicines, they
cannot grow with news – intellectual support-

d News
PI 22
that are contaminated by manipulation or
wrong treatment of them. That is also
corruption.
Any of these figures represent – especially
when they represent systems or campaigns-
submission of men: they condition, excite,
degrade and subdue him to seductive forms,
more and more subtle and more and more
irradiated and penetrating.
“Idea Journalism” –as seen later in theory and
methods- proposes restoring man in the core of
information, as a supreme subject,
authentically worthy of being served and
promoted for the truth.

Man who is cause, basis and aim of all
social organization, must be in plenitude
of all his rights, the only reference factor
in the processing of information. For a
simple and irrefutable reason: because
he is a human being and not a profane
consumer behind every radio or
television receptor, behind every
newspaper or magazine page, or behind
every web page as digital journalistic
mediation.

Journalism profession and social science

The three proposed and distinguished values,
namely: journalism universality, responsible
objectivity and the urge to restore man, in his
sublime dignity, to the core of news; imply
reconsidering professional journalism in its
principles and central role. This process has to
be backed up by theories and methods.
The reflection of complying with the universal
approach of information demands
understanding and positioning journalism as a
professional and universal activity, and insert

PI 23

journalists capable to do so. This is also useful
to require and ensure cultural interception
achievements in such process.
In order to have easy and clear rules for
universal communication, this must be
unquestionably guaranteed by responsible
objectivity and subjectivity; by the honesty and
richness of the treatment; reasonable criteria
for selection and promotion of news.
Restore man in the center of news with all his
qualities, freedom and dignity as a human
being and with identical possibilities in face of
media that has to serve him substantially,
promotes his consideration as vital subject and
corrects the distortions that limit him as a mere
news consumer.
It is only this way that the addresser acquires
relevance in every professional instance of
communication.
This way, the one that conditions the rules is
the addressee, accepted in all his majesty as
human being, irreplaceable main factor of
Media, consequently, the rules of the “system”
must subordinate to him and not the other way
round.
“Idea Journalism” proposes to revise behaviors,
ensuring the inalienable principles of man and
society, and that demand a “counter-system”
with methods.
It is pertinent to accept that news universality
is not so only for its traffic through the most
advanced technical media, but because it is
based on human, social and intellectual
principles. All this takes to a change in cultural
reasoning, formation and institutionalization of
professional journalist.
Public information by Massive Media and
supreme service to humanity must combine
through a prestigious professional discipline
that ensures character in the treatment of news
and ethics over its moral sense.
A new professional discipline that demands a

d News
PI 24
strong and engaged training, this guarantee
must be offered since the superior level of
learning.
Discipline journalism in its preparatory and
functional instances within a humanist and
universal framework of our time leads to its
characterization as a social science.
What is science but a search for theories and
methodologies? What is journalism but
searching and finding truth, with strong
theories and methodologies to communicate it
as information?
Framing journalism as a social science, it is
conceived as part of human and social sciences.
In this way it has to launch in the search for
new reliable requirements to satisfy, with the
greatest professional capacity, the demands of
validity required by social communication and
with this credibility, universality and responsible
objectivity for the superior service of humanity.
The reasons for this adaptation emerge as
natural and logical demand of contemporary
challenges and from the close relationship of
journalism with the accelerated benefits of
other sciences and technologies, which impose
the dynamic of social communications. We have
to favor and find the ways for a mentality and
discipline that modifies old concepts and that
helps to adapt to cultural changes of society.
The advances of sciences are greater and
greater. Journalism can not be outdated or it
will remain just as a “run, go and tell” activity.
Consequently, journalism is called to a
methodic discipline to improve human
knowledge that nourishes from what is shown
in the media, they are more and more
involving, penetrating and determining.
But, let other know, demands knowing what to
do and how to do it, in a methodological and
convincing way, with hierarchy and stability,
avoiding or preventing the risks of

PI 25

improvisations.
This is placed as a demand for the human
family to elevate to the sublime concepts of
truth, kindness, justice, dignity as universal
requirements, distinguishing that human spirit
that grows by the revelation and living of truth,
at the same time explains and orientates why
man starts feeling less objects-dependant and
more served by them.
The truth cared as the essence for the
informative and in cultural function, excites the
minds to a deeper and more careful
intelligence. Universality of the profession, its
prestige, its discipline, are constituted in
authorized way of relation between men,
enlightening their miseries and joys, their
deficiencies and abilities, projecting them
towards a better future.
But such aspirations cannot be elucidated and
applied only with scattered intentions or for
individualistic qualities. They must be carried
and admitted as a sort of normative school in
each mean of communication, in each
community, in universal society; therefore in
the practice of journalism.
It is a hard way due to its sacrifices, but the
only one capable of precisely characterizing the
real role of social communication in the process
of information. This process is born in the man,
grows, and if it is elevated to a superior
category in its content and treatment, it returns
to society to serve it, providing intellectual
support to improve human being and
knowledge.
This circuit is the one that turns the simple
treatment of information into responsible
making, which in “Idea Journalism” is
summarized these premises facilitated in its
methodologies: know how to think, make
others think and let them think. This is what we
call the message-information.

d News
PI 26

“Idea Journalism” proposes:
• To consider information not as a
rhetoric service of gathered words,
sounds and images, but as a service of
messages that are elaborated with the
contribution of news, facts, opinions,
as intellectual, moral and spiritual
support for people’s lives.
• The treatment that message-
information should receive must be
consequence of a harmonic
professional training, with the support
of sufficient, progressive and ethically-
social scientific methods to ensure the
thought vitality ,and the universal and
social responsibility of the media.

The transformation we propose cannot only be
oriented to recognizing the addressees of
communication –the audience- but also praise
professional addressors: the journalists.
Consequently, “Idea Journalism” promotes
authorial and autonomous professionalism,
which implies for every journalist to take
responsibility of information in its treatment, to
grow as a thinker and to give himself as a
creator. It is the journalist himself who will be
vindicated as a person, practicing all his
faculties, freeing from anonym that for its vices
has made possible to systematize impunity in
the wrong process of information.
This way “Idea Journalism” justifies itself as a
search for man, finds addressors and
addressees again.
And the state of Autonomy is incorporated,
vouched for society through the certificate and
training promoted and guaranteed by superior
studies, in order not to be dependant on a

PI 27

uniformed and only informing system, but
capable of making autonomous, active, creative
and profitable journalistic productions of self-
management and of offer to a globalized and
multimedia market, but in this case to make it
more human.

Self-management and Multimedia
Journalism
As an answer to contemporary challenges, our
school has incorporated to professional training,
knowledge, skills and abilities that allow
journalists multifunctional roles and multimedia
resolutions in the processes of preproduction,
production and postproduction.
In accordance with the particular dimension in
which “Idea Journalism” is given to
professionals, they will be able to manage with
his own methodology in independent
developments and systematically recreate his
authorial charisma. It is this way, because he
does not alienate his creative talent to the
Media with which he might have dependency
relations –limited but not absolute-. If he is not
in those conditions, he is restrained as
professional.
He can and should continue producing pieces of
social communication such as those allowed by
a creative and recreated journalism of research,
protocol, abstracts, reports, documentaries,
essays –invigorating his professional role and
conditions-. These are useful not only for their
specific growth but also to be offered to
editorials or audiovisual companies that are
interested in broadcasting. It is the self-
management and multimedia journalism for the
modern market. There are many Media that
outsource a big part of their special productions
now, and there are many proposals through
internet.
“Idea Journalism”, rescuing a new weighing
order in social communication, wants to

d News
PI 28
highlight the journalist as a professional,
permanent manager and leader of information,
a continuous promoter of ideas and journalistic
productions.
A panorama is pretended to be widen with this,
and at the same time to provide and answer to
skepticism that usually invades many
professionals, graduate and undergraduate
university students.
Universal reality shows how great works were
made by professionals of different activities,
who without the support of structures that
made them independent, were able to establish
formidable contributions for human welfare.
This made them deserve their geniality and
intellectual ownership.

PI 29

Theory and Methodology

Information supposes as generality “action of
communication”, in “Idea Journalism” it is
particularized with some kind of property,
because its contents are activated through the
use of Mass Media.
Media are those instruments for public
broadcasting that make use of social interest
information and must use them to keep social
dialogue and discussion between addressors and
addressees. The most common ones are radio
and television broadcasters, sound and
audiovisual broadcasting, newspapers and
magazines, graphic broadcasting; news agencies,
even though their news services reach the
audience indirectly through media that provides
direct service to all society and every other mean
and format developed and used with new
technologies and with that purpose, as web
pages, internet, and other technological
networks.
The varied ways of presenting news –in any
instance or form of development-, is reflected
according to the broadcasting Mean and the style

d News
PI 30
used.
Whatever the genre or journalistic
characteristic applied, and the way or reason
for its insertion in mass media, it is all
information.
For “Idea Journalism”, information does not
only consists of news and journalistic service,
but by the nature and function of Mass Media, it
encompasses any broadcasting carried out by
these means as a tutelary good*.
In the journalistic spaces only, they acquire
definite shapes, depending on whether they are
daily news and topics, the aspects that society
cares about.
In the case they are not journalistic, but
channeled as broadcasting through mass
media, they require particular and very
distinctive qualifications, avoiding confusions.
This is the case of commercial information
(direct or institutional publicity) or ideological
information (propaganda). Publicity and
propaganda cannot be handled with privileged
rules. As these rules are now, they certainly
oppose to the superior aim appointed in the
principles of this book.
These distinctions in “Idea Journalism”, as
regards all “communicative action”, signal
interest, not only for informing itself but
because they take into account the reasons for
informing and the social and democratic effects
that are aimed at when doing so.

Summing up, it is considered journalistically
professional, which preponderant in this theory,
all that is constituted formally and effectively in
the process of Social Communication for it most
structured manifestations and of multimedia
and alternative broadcasting (radio, TV, press,
internet, etc.).

That is to say:

*UNESCO definition “One world, multiple voices”

PI 31

News
Articles
Column
Comments
Interviews
Editorials

In “Idea Journalism”, Theory and Methodology
explain the process of making information-
message.
It consists of seven steps as a referential and
potential structure:

1° Society – Trend
2° Familiarization
3° Inwardness
4° Return to society, news sustenance
5° Message to society – Information pedagogy
6° Journalistic discourse in news- Message
7° Result control

Information – Message
Information – our subject matter- is not limited
as “communicative action”, but it is important
to care about the cause and effect of
information, applying a method in accordance
with the essential aims of this proposal.
Information- message demands a main role
that cares for, guides and elaborates it. It is
this active participation the one that enables
the journalist or communicator in his entire
dimension as a responsible and creditable
professional.
Moreover, the quality of message is the
demand for every piece of news that by its
content allows it, to carry a necessary and
practical formulation, capable of constituting a
proposal for man in society, not by doing a
simple listing of events and circumstances
merely routinely.
It is called “information-message” because this

d News
PI 32
way it structures the association of the
described event or the gathered opinion, with
the vital contribution, the creation, that reflects
what benefits man and society. The message is
as an act of deep reflection that preserves life
quality as a constant, implementing the
articulation of these key premises in Idea
Journalism: Know How to Think, Make
Others Think, and Let Them Think:
Vouching for their validity and credibility
Précising information due to lack of components
Clarifying the focus and sense of information
when proving its negativity for man and/or
society’s welfare.
Highlighting information when for its strength is
determining in man and/or society’s promotion.
Incorporating necessary and practical ideas as
proposals that may also require for experts, as
regards the information or topic.
Developing a pedagogic action

In order to comply with these and other
complementary requirements, it is necessary to
explain and contextualize information-message
with unity sense. It has been said that
professional, active, thinking, and creative main
role is the generator.
Any information becomes useless or spoiled as
message if journalistic management only
facilitates knowledge about an event, opinion,
document, etc, according to whether the text
was produced or prepared by third parties
outside the media, or journalists just repeat or
fragment it when broadcasting, without any
substantial treatment and selection, except for
adapting its syntax and elementary journalistic
forms.
To avoid giving thinking and creative qualities
to information is insisting on simplifying the
professional’s role to a simple, elementary

PI 33

reproducer. It is overriding his responsibility,
neglecting to take it and forgetting what society
has passed to him, for him to care for the
information to be something more than just a
collection of written or sound words or images,
which are unlinked, confusing or socially
useless.
For the information to acquire sense, it must
reflect and give a better future for man, as a
constant.
Information-message, due to the journalist’s
valuable contribution, starts being the center
and core of a complex but exciting effort to be
useful, in each case, in favor of man’s superior
welfare, counteracting the evil generated by
human miseries.
The vitality in this task –in which information
technology is incorporated- cannot be
effectively applied with “electronic brains”.
These allow accelerating and endlessly
reproducing a great number of pieces of
information –provision of allusive documents,
composition or broadcasting-, but we would
never go any further of getting information.
For this to be a message, professional
participation is irreplaceable.

Autonomous and authorial
That professional participation that elaborates,
cares, and guides information, and that also
takes moral and social responsibility for it;
confirms and habilitates in “Idea Journalism”
the authorial quality that distinguishes and is
given to every journalist, preserving:
Professional freedom
Knowledge demand
Methodic and methodological behaviors
Not because the journalist necessarily has to
identify in every one of his professional acts
before public opinion, but as a direct
consequence that every one of those acts is a
personal work, which does not pretend an

d News
PI 34
unnecessary appearance, a vain nomination. It
is because it has assumed its responsible,
professional, vital, creative participation in the
information process.
We have stressed the recreation of the
profession, pointing at self-management, as an
independent alternative.

Referential method
Having outlined these explanations, we will
explain now every one of the spaces that
compose the elaboration method for
information-message that does not have any
intention of bureaucratizing the journalistic job.
The essential is that with this, it is established
and stabled that all journalism is research
journalism, because it supposes professional
management if it is carried with methodological
support and in a methodological way.

PI 35

Methodological Process
THINKER I

What is a method?
Philosophically, it means “Order in sciences for
investigating and teaching the truth; it is in two
ways: analytical and comprised”.
Analytical: “The one that decomposes everything in
its constituting parts and studies every one of them
separately, to get to know its principles or
elements, going from particular cases to general
truths that encompass them.”
Comprised: “The one that goes from general truths
to conclude in the deduction of particular cases
encompassed in them.”
Methodology: Science about the method. “Group of
rules that must be followed when studying a
science.”*

Topic
We call Topic to every matter of social, local,
regional, national or international interest, which
arises and/or is proposed for journalistic mediation
to be broadcasted in Mass Media.
It is of professional character when it is
originated by journalistic management, or when it

*Universal Encyclopedia. Sciences Encyclopedia.

d News
PI 36
it arrives by cable or news agency service, that
gives it for granted.

It is not professional, when is given with
interest by institutions –private or public- of
social organization; or spontaneously by
experts or particular people –contacts,
spontaneous coworkers, etc- or when it means
the expression of popular murmur (gossip,
version), that being interesting and useful for
society, demands professional interception to
acquire category and social relevance.

steps


PI 37
Primary facts
arrives by cable or news agency service, that gives it for
granted.

It is not professional, when is given with interest by
institutions –private or public- of social organization; or
spontaneously by experts or particular people –
contacts, spontaneous coworkers, etc- or when it
means the expression of popular murmur (gossip,
version), that being interesting and useful for society,
demands professional interception to acquire category
and social relevance.

steps TOPIC: PRIMARY FACTS (origin, character, components)

DEVELOPMENT OF IDEA JOURNALISM
Vital Professional Participation
SOCIETY- TREND

TOPIC: PRIMARY FACTS (origin, character, components) FAMILIARIZING
INWARDNESS
3 sense - objective
SOCIETY- TREND
1 analysis- area - covering RETURN TO SOCIETY
FAMILIARIZING length - sequence
MESSAGES TO SOCIETY
5
INWARDNESS
3 sense - objective

RETURN TO SOCIETY JOURNALISTIC DISCOURSES

length - sequence
RESULT CONTROL
MESSAGES TO SOCIETY
5 MESSAGE INFORMATION PEDAGOGY


RESULT CONTROL

d News
PI 38
Every Topic requires a minimum of primary
facts or components: what happened; how;
when; where; who; and any other reference.
TOPIC: PRIMARY FACTS (origin, character, components)

With this mark of the authorial, Topic can the
the origin of the introduces be
SOCIETY- TREND distinguished: formal involved in a vital
professional language, facts, case,
1
emergent; participationthe itscharacter
in elaboration,that
to
analysis- area - covering
and
2 FAMILIARIZING
documentation - objective
treat information with efficacy,
geographically locates it: local, regional,
INWARDNESS
provincial, aware ofinternational. this has in
national, the value
3 sense - objective society.
RETURN TO SOCIETY This professional projection acquires
mean- genre – space the vital sign, because it must
length - sequence
nourish from principles, knowledge
Development of Idea Journalism
MESSAGES TO SOCIETY
and life experience; replacing all
improvised and impersonal tendency.
The orientation that the object of
6 IN THE NEWS- MESSAGE social communication has in order to
ensure quality and common welfare
7 RESULT CONTROL
foreseeable course and effect depends on this vital participation.
Society - Trend

Society - Trend

The journalist’s role in the process of
information-message, with the distinguishing

PI 39

avoid being updated about man and society’s
problems. To strengthen his knowledge in such
wide respect, he must resort in a routine and
disciplined way to whichever mean allows him
to be informed about such complex and even
unpredictable topics.
The logic of a topic will be considered solved
when the problematic and joint trend of the
surrounding society has been taken into
account. The answer will be easy, as far as the
professional journalist or the professional group
in charge of a topic has some cultural basis and
keeps updated about the process of humanity,
summarized by events, values, opinions.
Even though reality provides its evidence, or
sometimes they are the result of valuable pre-
existing analysis works, in the way the idea of
journalism with methodological basis advances,
new explanations can be encountered. They will
update legitimate parameters about the trend
of humanity and of every social society, in a
serious and continuous way – above all without
ideologies-.
Journalism has spoiled its efforts many times –
except for on purpose intentions- when it did
not know how to solve the Topic-Context-
Society assembly, caused by the ignorance of
the controversial and complex reality.
In this first step we have the spaces dedicated
to Analysis, Area and Covering of the Topic.

Interception analysis

Analysis virtually puts to test the entire
professional’s potentiality. It is the time when
methodology, knowledge and logic combine to
support decisions about the Topic as event-
process.
It is at this point that every Topic must be
framed by its intrinsic characteristics, qualities
and social importance and as regards its
categories to get a place in social

d News
PI 40
communication. These are questions that
demand a core decomposition and exploration.
It is a kind of social challenge to cultural and
technical capacity, to ethics and responsibility,
and above all, to maturity and vitality of
thought of professional journalists.
The Topic is analyzed with the gathered
components and conditions and according to
the service it will provide to man and society.
As regards the first point, it is clear about its
minimal informative strengths and weaknesses
to justify its development.
Its real importance, urgency, and interest for
society and its trend will be determined in its
qualities.
The moment of analysis is important, crucial
and key point, because it is when the
professional decides whether the Topic has to
be feasible and installed as public information,
or disregarded; whether it is of immediate
inclusion in broadcasting or it must be kept
until its verification and greater treatment. And
so on and so forth, successive alternatives.
These resolutions are virtually a privilege in the
process of Topic treatment, because the only
witnesses are the professionals that have the
internal responsibility in the Media.
Errors of Analysis can encompass: hiding the
truth, censorship, exclusion, desecration or
mutilation of the truth; promotion of untruth
news, neglect a truth, etc. These risks are
taken when choosing to promote or disregard
information, or when its treatment is partial or
exaggerated.
“Idea Journalism” rescues every professional as
a responsible in these stages of methodological
development of Analysis, allowing the writing
body of each mean to participate, according to
the form of working and organization.
This is done not only to recognize that there is
a hierarchical structure constituted in every
Media but to propose teamwork with a

PI 41

cooperative sense – and every time it is
possible- before the great social responsibility
in the management of topics that become
public and tutorial information.

Area

In all the topics – without exceptions- there is a
formal range of origin and direct or indirect
reference, explicit or implicit from which it has
arouse or started.
In a direct way when the source is mentioned.
In an indirect way, when it is about an event
and when it is implicitly deducted, or when the
source is anonymous and must be intercepted,
deduced or confirmed.
The one who has to make the effort to shape
the area is the Professional in journalism that
cannot be content only with what might be
explicit or implicit in the proposal or event.
To precise the area of a topic helps journalism
to investigate the causes and order what will be
the unfolding of such topic, in the process of
treatment as information, and at the same
time, to find the protagonists involved, which
possibly will be able to feed it back through
facts, interviews, documents and reasoning.

topic area covering

Covering
Whereas the Area is the space reserved to
shape the starting range of a Topic, Covering
encompasses the comprising segment of
movement of that, concrete or possible.
It is located or uncovered here, by reasoning
and deduction, to which in society the Topic will
interest or affect, and its possible broadcasting
when it is promoted to public information.
For example: if the Topic is originated in a

d News
PI 42
State organization – a resolution in taxes or
wages, for instance- the professional in
journalism is the one that, disregarding that he
knows about the topic and the society, should
point who are directly or indirectly, explicitly or
implicitly implicated in such Topic – wage
earners, unions, businessman, taxpayers, etc-
through the social structure. This way, it is
determined the logical and possible circuit that
tackling suggests, when moving to society.
In the space of Covering is proposed, besides
solving where to get the references and the
concurrent repercussions to complement the
journalistic management, to give a real place to
the Topic in society and that society
participates. This way, it stops being only the
consumer of information by the Media, it allows
to widen treatment resources balancing the
possibilities for everyone, making contributions,
giving opinions, supporting, criticizing, giving it
legitimate belonging.
The division in Area and Covering, done in this
step, is used to order ideas about social
organization, facilitating the location of the
stage and the protagonists involved in the
topics, and it makes journalists think about the
ones implicated and about the implications of
each Topic in society.
Finally, if the Topic is installed as anonymous,
version or gossip that justifies the potentiality
for taking public state, it demands to be
dimensioned in the covering due to its social
impact.

topic analysis area covering


PI 43

In the second methodological step, TOPIC: PRIMARY FACTS (origin, character, components)

accurate and dynamic researches are DEVELOPMENT OF IDEA JOURNALISM

carried out to deepen the Topic. SOCIETY- TREND
1
Familiarizing is a joint and/or historic analysis- area - covering

documentation, evidential of each 2 FAMILIARIZING
documentation - objective

Topic, and every fact or opinion
INWARDNESS
taken from the experts, 3 sense - objective

representative and knowledgeable RETURN TO SOCIETY

people that can support it. 4 SUPPORTING THE NEWS
length - sequence

MESSAGES TO SOCIETY
5

Documentation (INFORMATION- CULTURE – PROMOTION)

As a documental and bibliographic JOURNALISTIC DISCOURSES
source, documentation helps as 6 IN THE NEWS- MESSAGE

illustrative support for a serious RESULT CONTROL
treatment of any Topic. 7 foreseeable course and effect

Its characteristics are many. They can be
documents, bibliographies, recordings,
interviews, field investigations, statistics,
photographs, videos, etc.
This first step proposes locating the topic within
It can be given to each Media along with the
the social context in which it is produced and
topic proposal, or otherwise, it must be
from which it is projected.
collected or looked for in the appropriate
Every Topic is local when it belongs to a field of
places: public or private libraries, newspaper
concrete geographic origin. But to the media it
libraries, and video libraries, Media and
is interesting for; it might be local, regional,
institutions archives, informatics’ memory,
national or international according to its origin
internet, etc. It will depend on the Topic.
and projection.
The truth is, that when historic-joint
It is correct to make this observation for
documentation as documentation is looked for,
making possible that the Topic receives a
besides imposing in journalism the trend that
treatment according to surrounding reality, at
links problematic and culture in the process of
the time it is produced, and to avoid that, by
information, it is not done other than link and
any reason that ignores such references, the
accept that every present has a history; a
treatment could be inappropriate or confusing.
concurrent or compared explanation,
It results obvious that the journalist
references, studies, statistics, cues and
professionally trained, must know the better
expressions, probably recorded and valid.
possible universal society reality in its main
To admit certain Topics – that demand
manifestations and problematic. More
documentation- isolating them from
particularly, the one from his country and
antecedents, do not effort to get them, or
region of influence of his activity or of coverage
of the Mean he works for.

d News
PI 44
antecedents, do not effort to get them, or
omitting facts and experiences that can satisfy
any documentation, is wasting the chance for
enriching the cultural-informative task of Media
and disregard methodological requirements.

Experts

The word Expert is used to individualize all
those people that can provide testimonial facts
or justified opinions for the treatment of Topics.
The meaning of Expert is applied to any person
that has witnessed an event, or that is related
to its origin or consequences, and to every
qualified person to provide authorized opinion
about the Topic. Those who have responsibility
in society about the Topics can be included in
this category.
Summing up, the protagonists, specialists, or
people inherent to a piece of information to
balance it in objective responsibility comprise
Experts.

They are necessary to extend facts about
the information and the journalist’s
cultural universe.
To assure it and make contributions,
giving permanent and systematic place
to society’s participation in the process of
social communications and making truth
fruitful, through the possibility of
participation and equality by the contest
of different opinions.

The opinions taken from the Experts could be
used in different way in the treatment of a
Topic, whether it is by transmitting those
opinions as part of the information or making
use of them to justify the news treatment.


omitting facts and experiences that can PI 45
satisfy any documentation, is wasting
Summing up, the protagonists, specialists, or
the chance for enriching the cultural-
people inherent to a piece of information to
informative in objective responsibility comprise
balance it task of Media and disregard TOPIC: PRIMARY FACTS (origin, character, components)
methodological requirements.
Experts. DEVELOPMENT OF IDEA JOURNALISM

SOCIETY- TREND

FAMILIARIZING

The It is aExpert is usedthe individualize
word challenge for to journalist INWARDNESS
all in his discipline and knowledge of
those people that can provide 3 sense - objective

methodology and for his essence
testimonial facts or justified opinions for RETURN TO SOCIETY

as a creative being, capable of
the treatment of Topics. 4 SUPPORTING THE NEWS
length - sequence
The knowing of Expert is applied that
meaning how to think and to any
MESSAGES TO SOCIETY
person that has witnessed merit and or
way legitimate the an event, 5 MESSAGE INFORMATION PEDAGOGY

that opportunity thatto was given to or
is related he its origin inform – educate – guide

consequences, let think. every qualified
make and and to JOURNALISTIC DISCOURSES
person to provide authorized opinion 6 IN THE NEWS- MESSAGE

about the Topic. Those who have
The opinions taken from the Experts could be7 RESULT CONTROL
responsibility in society about the Topics foreseeable course and effect
used in different way in the treatment of a
can be included in this category.
Topic, whether it is by transmitting those
opinions as part of the information or making
use of them to justify the news treatment.

Inwardness

Inwardness demands the greatest professional,
humanist, intellectual, moral and cultural effort
to enhance and recreate the Topic-Information
with a sense and objective.

d News
PI 46
personal concepts, prejudice or ideologies in
order to make his professional responsibility
prevail and coincide with a kind of social
subjectivity that arises from society with lasting
and valid values of what is natural in collective
consciousness and culture.
The ideological subjectivity of the journalist will
never come before to condition or subdue
society.
Inwardness goes beyond. It is its mission to
point and suggest necessary transformations
for the man and the community, defining the
Objective of every information-message. An
inevitable consequence of the potential effect
desired by means of this, for Common Welfare.
It is spontaneously present when the positive
and transcendental of human events is
excelled, and when the negative and degrading
in them is discouraged and fought. However, it
may grow in a more effective way, when adding
ideas and concrete projects that are shown in
the aim-objective that the journalist will
propose and support with the sense he will give
to every piece of information. This comes from
the contributions that have been achieved in
that enterprising search in each one of his
managements.
To sum up, internalize is like diving into each
Topic decided as information, to understand it
and precise it in its social aim.
This way information acquires the vitality
transmitted by the journalist that cares for it,
which familiarizes it and integrates as his own,
and turns it into experience and superior cause.
That way a piece of news with an aim and basis
is ready to be launched to massive
communication, for its solidity and truth and
attracting for its newly precision, at the mercy
of the Sense and Objective that the authorial
journalist claims and resolves: “To teach the
human condition…” and “to learn the job of
living…”*

*Edgar Morin

PI 47
Sense
The continuum of treatment faces the Topic
with the one that will be its real cultural author,
decided to turn it into

information-message. Up to now it was enough
to apply technical knowledge and experience
with vital participation, organizing the context
for the Topic –its previous expansion and
prospective-, this is the moment to define its
aim, depth and human benefit. Only this way it
will be possible to make it live among the rest
when it is broadcasted.
Being able to internalize a Topic that is already
in information process will demand a cultural
engagement with priorities, basis and
effectiveness.
Inwardness should care not only of the truth of
Objective
the information, but also make it effective and
useful with responsible objectivity and
subjectivity.
The layer of subjectivities – for its depth and
even mystery- does not have a regulating
method for its absolute determination, but it
*Casuistry of Human Rights.

d News
PI 48
Objective that it seeks to achieve with
creativity.

If the Sense of Information is the cause
of its aim, the Objective is the aim with a
cause.

The journalist will look for that Objective
according to the expectations and superior
interests of Common Welfare.
It must be concrete, useful and fruitful to allow
society take decisions.
There will be times in which, by broadcasting
information, the Objective seeks help or
solution to the dramatic problem of a particular
person, of a group or community, because it is
not determined by the amount of people
involved but for the social benefit that
encourages. A mother or a wife claims for a
child or a husband profaned in their legitimate
rights; someone claims for an exceptional
medicine; another does it for legitimate social
justice. When in war, he will foster peace; in
discouragement, hope; to misery, dignity; to
injustice, vindication.
The important is to take implicit the cause and
the effect that assembles every information-
message, for man and society welfare. That is
why it has to be feasible and ethical; justified
and creatively exposed.
As with every hypothesis of Social Sciences,
and for many reasons, the objective might be
restated throughout the course of treatment of
information-message and even after this has
been broadcasted, feeding it back. The
journalist professional, even though being
responsible, is not infallible. Neither can he

PI 49

foresee all the following, simultaneous,
concurrent or modifying course contingencies of
information-message in its social displacement.
Any Objective correction will do no other than
improve professional management, adjusted to
the line of principles sustained by the Sense.
The Objective, aim-effect of information-
message public broadcasting, flexible in its
proposals and directions, does not do other
than facilitate the destiny of all communication,
responding to superior interests that are not
the journalist’s ones or the Media ones, but
they are always and only valid if they are the
ones of society that bring all into line.
Further on Social Pedagogy of Information in
“idea Journalism” will be added, in the 5° step
(Message to Society), arranging a stable
service of human promotion.

d News
PI 50
Return to Society
TOPIC: PRIMARY FACTS (origin, character, components)
Every Topic, which in one way or
DEVELOPMENT OF IDEA JOURNALISM another interests the Media as an issue
SOCIETY- TREND of social event, must resolve in this
1
step the formal and organic aspects for
analysis- area - covering

2 FAMILIARIZING
documentation - objective public broadcasting.
INWARDNESS
In its evolution, it has received,
3 sense - objective
through methodological treatment, not
RETURN TO SOCIETY only informative ingredients.
mean- genre – space Consequently, every information-
length - sequence

message is a structured piece “ad
MESSAGES TO SOCIETY
intro” in order to constitute “ad extra”,
make others think – promote as intellectual, moral and spiritual
support for man, who has to receive it
indicative shape data for any Mass Media.
RESULT CONTROL
This makes the formal
institutionalization of information in full
social relation.
According to the mean and the characteristics
through which broadcasting is made, the way
to do it has to be resolved.
The Media, according to the resources it has, its
policies and style, and the responsible
professional, is the one that has to decide the
return and the most effective installation of
such information in society. This implies
specifying: the opportunity, genre,
characteristics, format and intensity.
All the indicators that have been accumulated
are useful to support these decisions.
Every journalistic structure should provide not
only its material potentialities in these
instances, but also the good use it can –and
should- do of them; giving communication
productions the resources of a dynamic, active
and serious journalism, with scientific basis,
research and methodology. The relation media-
receptor is institutional, due to the demands it
makes every Media comply with the
transcendental role they are conferred, and at
the same time, it is vital because it will provide
information with an appropriate treatment,

PI 51

information with an appropriate treatment,
documented and creative, thanks to the
authorial participation of the professional.

Media
The universality of methodology encompasses
all Media, formats and journalistic genre.
Considering that fact, the presentation details
will –creatively- define the recommended
variations.
Multimedia companies as well as news Agencies
will give different treatment to the same topic,
adapting them in form and language.

Genre
Determining the genre or journalistic
expression that will formalize the information-
message is essential for knowing how it will be
developed.
It is known that in journalism every genre or
formal way of expression has its particularities.
Such is the case of news, news in brief,
interview, comment, column, editorial. It has
been proved nowadays that there are not pure
genres because in one way or another they are
all interactive.

Space – extension and sequence
The Space – extension really refers to
modalities and informative styles of each
Media, and to the dimension given to each
Topic.
The Sequence refers to the evolution and
potential guidelines to adapt its sustainability in
the interest and for the interest of society.
Knowing in which space and with which
quantitative dimension the information-
message will acquire its social displacement, is
a main fact to adapt its preparation. This is
determined by those that coordinate the
contextualization of the media, including the
evaluating team, the writing team, editors and

d News
PI 52
journalistic producers; and also admit that the
professional in charge of the topic can propose
and defend to that matter, for the responsibility
and authorship that relies on him.
Determining the genre or form of expression
chosen, is accompanied by the decision about
the space it can cover.
Anyway, its space-extension will have relation
with the importance of its dimension, and
certainly, with its final quality; reference that is
common to all Means of Communication.
It is very interesting to foresee a Sequence of
topic sustainability, with successive
information-messages, since it has explicit
relation with the pursued Objective and
possible alternatives.
Information-message proposes a more applied
development. This leads to questioning about
the possibility of doing it in certain Media where
information get a fast pace as in radio and
television. Of course it is possible. The answer
is positive from the substantial: if information is
an intellectual, moral and spiritual support that
ensures validity and credibility, its content can
not be daily and elementary diminished.
As regards the Sequence of a Topic, it is
important to take some examples, and in the
universal panorama we find countless of them.
The case of an expansive contamination,
natural catastrophes, disturbances, corruption,
violence, absence of peace in a community or
between nations, wars, etc. There are in all
fields: social, political, economic, education,
religious, cultural, sport.
In all of them, the process of social
communication, through the treatment of
information as messages, is vital and essential;
it contributes to human progress and welfare,
sustaining the Topic to the top, according to the
Sense and Objective determined by the
professional responsibility and the Media.

PI 53

This does not mean denying that the
treatment of information, before their
multiplicity –by greater universal influx
and fast traffic- demands in every
moment a careful use of the time
available in each mean, as well as all
creativeness, art and design to make
communication attractive; in other
words, the modernization and
contextualization of spaces.
It is not less true that it does not
correspond to establish the speed and
quality antinomy of information as
opposed and irreconcilable, because this
would mean a loss of responsibility
superior to communications as protecting
good.
It is untrue to sustain paradigmatically
that so commonly used about the
“tyranny of time” – that is claimed a lot
on radio and television, more as an
excuse than as a truth, in order to avoid
improvisations-, since the demands of
taking the truth to public opinion cannot
be sacrificed and subdued to vices or
other interests.

Multimedia Journalism Protocol

For self-managing and multimedia journalism
we have developed the idea of multimedia
journalistic protocols.

Basis: “The change of time and the time of
change” undeniable in this new century,
determine the need for a responsible and
creative journalism, innovative in response to
these challenges.
Therefore, the certainty and convenience of an
appropriate planning that combines theory and
practice of neo investigation Journalism in a
methodic and methodological way for the

d News
PI 54
treatment of relevant topics for society, and
with that the scientific-social validity of them,
with creativity and originality through the
Journalistic Protocols.

General Objective: strengthen training from our
school, and promote interest in promoting and
establishing Autonomous and Authorial Self-
managing Journalism.

Specific Objective: center in only one topic of
investigation (particularly of social interest) and
simultaneously assuming its knowledge in
depth and the immediate journalistic
productions, through and ordered series of
articles and/or matrix multimedia productions
for its broadcasting offer in a certain period.

Basic Diagram: the Protocol requires an
appropriate planning through its development
in determined periods and following its stages:

1) Topic selection
2) Summary of the proposal or topic description
3) Justification of the topic
4) Formulation and posing of the problem for
investigation, clarifying its object of study
(framing it in space and time)

PI 55

Process
Project design

Opposition re-dimensions aproval

Production and development

Final production and multimedia edition

Multimedia formats
Summary for its social transmission: Topic-
Central ideas- Revelations- Final multimedia
productions

Press*pages *picture/ pre headline *headline
*nose *body matter
*linksRadio*dialogue script *a page with
support recording TV*audiovisual
scriptInternet*adapted to the page design
*idem press/it adds productions
Investigation Topics
Political/ Social/ Economic/ Cultural/
Educational/ Religious/ Specific Problems.

People – Celebrities
Life Stories
Revelation of a town
Where they come from, where they go to
What happens – Why it happens – Projections
and proposals

Idea Journalism

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Similaire à Idea Journalism

Similaire à Idea Journalism (20)

Plus de Carla Melisa Nicolato

Plus de Carla Melisa Nicolato (20)

Idea Journalism