“Lifelong journalism continues to be fundamental: getting news out, explaining it well and giving it context; now we also have many more ways of distributing it", assured the director of La Vanguardia, Jordi Juan, during the round table 'Journalists in redefinition from the professional reality', held this afternoon at the Auditorium of the Faculty of Communication and International Relations of Blanquerna-URL and in which the director of Ara, Esther Vera; the director of El Periódico, Albert Sáez, and the dean of the College of Journalists of Catalonia, Joan Maria Morros. The event took place within the framework of the XXIX Congress of the Spanish Society of Journalism.
Regarding the moment of redefinition of the profession, Jordi Juan has affirmed that precisely journalism has gone through continuous changes and has always adapted. “Traditional journalism was limited to making a story to publish the newspaper and now it is multimedia, you have to be on social networks, make videos, podcasts and if there is TikTok, you have to be on TikTok”, continued the director of La Vanguardia. “The appearance of the smartphone has changed the way of working and even the internal organization itself: each piece of news must be seen if we give it first on the web or on paper, who writes it, how it is done… The goal is for readers to have our news as quickly as possible, always preserving the high quality standards on all platforms”.
Regarding Artificial Intelligence, he has affirmed that a robot will never replace the "human journalist" but that it is positive to "use this technology" to free the journalist from the heaviest and most mechanical tasks. He has also warned of the importance of sending the message to readers that information from prestigious media is written by humans "because there is going to be a wave of portals and websites that will do all the information with AI." Precisely regarding AI, Joan Maria Morros has highlighted that it is necessary to achieve with this technology that what happened with previous ones is repeated: “Take advantage of the positive aspects for our work and minimize the negative ones”. "The machines help us but it will always be necessary for a journalist to be at the scene of the events," she added.
Continuing with the redefinition of the trade, Esther Vera recalled that the raw material of journalism continues to be information and that "we have the obligation to do classic journalism with new instruments, as we did first with social networks and now with AI, which allow us to improve our analysis capacity because the added value will continue to be provided by journalists, not robots”.
For his part, Albert Sáez, has stated that the way of doing journalism has not changed “but the way of relating to our readers”. “20 years ago we decided what time we closed the newspapers and what news we reported and what we didn't. Now we have lost this control. Readers seek information without waiting for us to give it to them; If they find it, perfect, and if not, they go to look for it elsewhere, even if it doesn't have the same quality”.
The battle against misinformation has been another star topic of the round table. There has always been fake news, Jordi Juan pointed out, "but now there are many more and some media broadcast this type of news because they are in tune with the public that follows them." He has warned that in this fight for the audience that calls for immediacy when publishing news "you have to be very careful" and that you have to resort as always "to specialists to contrast the subject, which is the ABC of journalism" .
And regarding the future of the newspaper business, Jordi Juan has pointed out the great opportunity that opens up with the digital subscription. “When the Internet appeared, we posted all the information for free to be there and as a publicity claim; as more information was consumed through mobile phones, paper sales were falling and now we have to make a huge effort to get people to pay for content that they used to consume for free”. He expressed his satisfaction with how the market is evolving in this regard and said that he believed that the future lay in "being able to send the message that prestigious media and journalists are the best way to fight against fake news". .
