The CAF and the FNPI ratified their commitment to Iberian-American journalism

Monterrey, N.L. Gabriel García Márquez, president of the Iberian-American New Journalism Foundation (FNPI), and Enrique García, president of the Corporación Andina de Fomento, yesterday signed a collaboration agreement that ratifies the commitment of the two organizations –signed in 2003- to quality in journalism in Latin America. The agreement, which seeks to encourage professionalism, independence, and responsibility in journalism, was signed during the seminar “The role of the editor in the search for quality in journalism,” held on August 28 and 29 at the Monterrey Museum of Contemporary Art, with the support of CEMEX and the Carolina Foundation (Fundación Carolina).

The seminar opened with an exposition by Jean François Fogel, advisor to Le Monde, on the editor’s role in the editorial room bearing in mind the changes and transitions journalism is undergoing in the digital age. Fogel maintained that the main change is in the readers, who today are using the tools offered by the Internet to produce and obtain the information they need. The editor has become less important and now faces the challenge of “repositioning himself in the real and virtual worlds.” Roberto Guareschi, the director of the Carolina Foundation‘s editor training program, drew attention to the importance of starting more training programs in journalistic editing. “A lot of editors fall into the trap of going straight from being journalists to becoming editors,” said Guareschi, explaining that reporters become editors as a way of getting a promotion or obtaining a better salary, often without any training in editing or experience as an editor.

After the debate, Enrique García, CAF’s Executive President, presented his vision of the integration of Latin American countries as a path to sustained development. He said that, like editors, the region is at a turning point and must adapt to the context of globalization if it is not to get left behind in the international context.

The seminar, whose main aim is to reflect on the importance of the editor in the Latin American media and his capacity for contributing to quality journalism, organized debates on the tasks of the editor in the editorial room and the problems and possibilities of photo editing. Among the participants were Luis Miguel González (Público Milenio, Mexico), Juan Miguel Dumall (El Periódico de Catalunya, Spain), Diego Goldberg, winner of the CEMEX+FNPI New Journalism Award in the photography category, and Donna de Cesare (United States), a member of the jury awarding the Prize.

Alma Guillermoprieto will be moderator for the closing panel on narrative journalism, with comments from Julio Villanueva Chang (Etiqueta Negra, Peru), Paula Escobar (El Mercurio, Chile), Andrés Hoyos (El Malpensante, Colombia), Raúl Peñaranda (Época, Bolivia), and Guillermo Osorno (Gatopardo, Mexico). This is the fourth in a series of seminars on quality in journalism that are being held as part of a CAF+FNPI program of Journalism Encounters, which has been in progress for four years. The reports on previous seminars and the rapporteur’s reports on the workshops are available on www.nuevoperiodismo.org and www.caf.com