Journalistic procedures of the freelance chronicles from the Newsmaking theoretical approach

Abstract

The journalistic exercise has been diversified. Not only new technologies have contributed to provide different views of the reality of this trade, but also theoretical approaches different from the traditional ones. One of them is the Newsmaking approach or construction of the news. This perspective has been useful for studying the productive routines of journalists who write for traditional media. However, their study may also be useful to study other less orthodox genre such as the chronicle. We start considering that one of the modalities of Newsmaking (not the only one) is to study the reality of reporters in situ, in their places of work. That is, in the newsrooms. There it is possible to focus on the routines that this theory aims to explain. In the case of the chroniclers it is different, because most of them are freelance authors; that is to say that they elaborate the proposed or commissioned stories without stepping on a newsroom. The editor's guide is done remotely, usually by email. However, even in these cases, the features of their routines can be determined, because the production process is understood as the practices or procedures with which the chroniclers construct reality, despite their freelance status. And although the way in which the chronicle is written is different, because in this genre predominates the use of procedures typical of literature, there are aspects such as the selection and construction of topics that are similar to the configuration of the news. That being said, the challenge of this work is to identify and explain, from the theoretical focus of Newsmaking, those procedures and routines of both newsroom reporters and freelance authors, and to find similarities and differences.