I intend to convey to my students that this being an exciting profession, it has a very great social responsibility

This is a story that started a long time ago. I was doing my doctoral thesis in the mid-1990s and I was interested in a phenomenon that at that time was purely germinal. They were the very first digital media. They were a kind of news that came from the United States and in Spain there was literally nothing. I became interested on the one hand because I was interested in journalism, I was interested in computing and because I was interested in promising land. The places where not much had been done. That was a land to colonize both from the professional point of view and from the academic point of view.

The beginnings were a bit exploratory because it was a very secondary phenomenon and I would even say underestimated. Not only secondary from the professional point of view but even within the university itself. Journalism studies were seen as something very marginal. But in sight is what has happened in this quarter of a century. It has become something absolutely nuclear, central in all media strategies, in the professional skills of journalists, in the economic planning of large and small corporations. It is a very interesting field and I am very happy to have focused on it.

"It has become something absolutely nuclear, central in all media strategies, in the professional skills of journalists, in the economic planning of large and small corporations"

Do you think there is still some prejudice around professionals who are dedicated to digital journalism?

Every time less. Time passes and those who were 20 years old at the end of the 90s are now 45 or 50 and in managerial positions. Many of the digital journalists in those days were people with little experience when they took their first steps in the field of cyberjournalism and now they have consolidated and many of them have become consecrated and are at the head of highly renowned journalistic media. I think that this is the law of life, as time progresses and what once was qualified again becomes something of the present. It's already very rare to come across a journalist who refers to digital media as new media. They have been new for 20 years and have become part of the landscape.

Given your experience in the field of professional and academic journalism, do you think it is relevant to have combined both facets in order to investigate with more criteria?

I think that when someone intends to delve into the academic point of view in any discipline, not only in journalism, it is good that they have professional experience. But that alone is not enough. In fact sometimes it is not the most important thing. In academic work, methodological rigor, theoretical qualification, the skills to be able to develop research projects are lacking... To the extent that one is also a teacher, didactic skills are also lacking. Quite a few qualities are needed and just having passed through a communication medium is not enough, but it is something very convenient. It gives you knowledge of phenomena that you now analyze and try to contribute ideas and reflections for their improvement.

Ramón Salaverría, during a presentation in 2019. Fernando Mucci

It was a personal circumstance. I was a journalist by profession. I worked on the radio, in agencies... In the 90s. But certain personal circumstances made me leave and I had a proposal to do a doctoral thesis with a scholarship that I accepted. But it was not at all in my plans. But after so much time I am very comfortable because it allows me to analyze a phenomenon that I wanted to dedicate myself to professionally at the time. It allows me to reflect and contribute ideas for its improvement.

The circumstances of each are what they are. Sometimes we meet journalists who have a long professional career and at the end of that career they intend to pass on their craft and knowledge to young journalists. There are researchers who have practically no professional experience and who have great teaching and research qualities and who can cover, and in fact cover, areas of journalistic training that may not be the most technical of instructing certain skills but that allow you to reflect and have to do with sociology or economics. Everything adds up to the extent that people do their part.

In general, what I intend to convey to my students is the idea that, being this an absolutely exciting profession, it has a very great social responsibility. Journalists, like other professionals who are public servants, fulfill a function. This is to provide true, relevant, current information so that people can make decisions freely. Nothing more and nothing less than that. And this is essential in democratic societies. Professionals are needed to work on this type of task. Just as there are doctors, firefighters and a thousand social service professions, journalists also fulfill this type of function.

"Journalists, like other professionals who are public servants, fulfill a function. This is to provide true, relevant, current information so that people can make decisions freely"

My focus will be more focused on how the ways of telling information are changing. The digital transformation has opened up many opportunities. The classic model of the journalist's profile associated only with the traditional media of press, radio and television has been broken and now the informative work is no longer just incorporating the internet and mobile phones as a new communication platform, but the informative work itself can be expressed in many different ways. In fact now the information professions are essential. Let's not forget that today's society is called precisely like that, it is the information society. Therefore, information professionals are, in principle, highly qualified to fulfill multiple functions in this context in which we are living.

Absolutely. But this happens to many professions. In any scientific or technological profession. From doctors to architects. They are all experiencing a very rapid transformation of their technologies. Also communicators. In this sense, the technologies that have spread in recent years and that will surely continue to transform journalism, what they are doing is expanding the field of journalism.

Far from enclosing or limiting its scope, despite the fact that certain traditional media are seeing their audiences and audiences shrink, what is actually happening is that the profession is expanding. It is having territories where informative work is beginning to be more and more required. Communication in business spheres, people who individually start an information project specializing in some type of niche information... There are many territories that were not previously part of the classic media structure and that, thanks to technology, have expanded . Obviously this is very challenging for professionals.

Yes of course. There is a whole series of tasks that go beyond pure reporting, the classic idea of the journalist as a person who seeks, prepares and disseminates information. In addition to this, it is necessary to strategically plan its dissemination, see what funding opportunities arise... The journalists who, for example, have launched digital native projects in recent years are not only excellent journalists, they are also good strategists who know how to play with marketing strategies know how to incorporate technologies that allow them to consolidate their projects, establish relationships with the public in a much more enriching and not purely commercial way. They are new disciplines and profiles that journalists must gradually incorporate and that effectively demand an increasingly diverse training.