Content

1. The history of the genres of journalistic quality and their social function.
1.1 Journalism as a capitalist business of truth: dynamics of the media and journalistic field and their effects on interpretative genres.
1.2 The first definition of journalistic genres: facts are sacred, comments are free, and Pulitzer's facts-facts-facts. Establishing the distinction between information, interpretation, and opinion. The emerging conflict between two paradigms of journalism theory.
1.2.1 Forms of incorporating voices in texts: connected articulation between summary and quote as a basic procedure of informative journalistic writing (summary, quote, and scene as narrative contribution). Forms of citation: direct, indirect, free indirect style, and other extreme forms (stream of consciousness).
1.2.2 Contributions of textual linguistics and pragmatics to informative writing: how we build the appearance of objectivity from subjectivity. Illocutionary attributions, ideological designations, and context expansions.
1.3 Another tradition of journalism arises from the margins: the consolidation of investigative journalism: Nelly Bly, Theodor Dreiser, and the muckrakers: Lincoln Steffens, John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, etc. The change of perspective: observation and the subject in the medium. From the field to interpretation: Rosana Gurber, John Berger: ways of seeing. The emergence of chronicle, interview, and reportage as narrative genres. Connection with the successors of the Lost Generation: J. Steinbeck/D. Lange (The Harvest Gypsies), J. Dos Passos (Facing the Chair), J. Agee/W. Evans (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), the urban chronicle of Djuna Barnes and J. Mitchell. Collective memory versus hegemonic memory and the role of the journalistic field.

2. Is journalism a priesthood of truth? The conflict between positivism and relativism and their political consequences.
2.1 Epistemology and philosophy of knowledge: what is language? The being as a speaking animal: everything in our mental life is in words or in search of words. The linguistic turn as an awareness of the linguistic nature of thought and the rhetorical condition of language.
2.2 Application to the linguistic and word-crafting work of journalism: relativistic/critical paradigm confronting the objectivist paradigm. Political reading of the positivist epistemological option: everything has already been said and done, we just have to recite it.
2.3 Journalism as a form of knowledge of linguistic nature that tries to word experience and build a possible world. The faction.

3. The theory of discourse genres and journalistic genres.
3.1 The objectivist paradigm and its genre theory: the emergence of the interpretative reporting paradigm and journalism as a process of successive interpretation (Ll. Gomis). Deconstruction of the generic distinction between information, interpretation, and opinion.
3.2 Contributions of modern discourse genre theory: what is a discourse genre?
3.2.1 Types of genres: Hybridization and innovation as the nature of discourse genre. The genre as a result of a tension between form and function: analysis of generic series and the presence of constants and variables.

4. Rhetoric and discourse theory: pragmatics and textual linguistics.
4.1 Rhetoric: the ars recta discendi and the ars bene discendi: the ability to find in each matter what is most apt to persuade an audience. Ethos, logos, and pathos.
4.2 Rhetoric and formal logic: two opposing forms of argumentative work and linguistic knowledge. The distinction between truth, veracity, and plausibility: rhetoric (and journalism) communicate with the efficacy of plausibility.
4.3 The parts of rhetoric: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and actio. Inventio, argumentation: figures, fallacies, and syllogisms. Inventio and tematology. The structure of dispositio: exordium, body, and coda. Elocutio and the forms of discourse: emotion and reason.

5. The narrative and narratology.
5.1 The narrative paradigm: the narrative as a way of knowing and structuring the experience of the real. The figure of bound time (E. Lynch); the narrative as a symbolic way of mastering contingency (Ll. Duch). The construction of personal and collective imagery: tematology (P. Brunnel, Elizabeth Frenzel, Bachelard). Narrative writing as an accessible (and popular) way to access complexity.
5.2 Narratology: the theory of narrative: forms of composition and style. Scenic writing of realist literature: detail, scene, dialogue, character, and point of view.
5.3 The point of view: the instance from which the story is told or shown. The cognitive and expressive prerogatives of points of view: from where the narrative voice looks, how much it knows about the story. Types of points of view and applications (and examples) in informative journalistic writing.
5.4 The plot: the temporal movements with which we construct the narrative from the story. Synchronic and anachronistic plots. Plot editing: simple or multiple parallel edits. 'Rashomon' technique and derivatives. Applications (and examples) in informative journalistic writing.
5.5 Characters and spaces. Main and secondary characters, flat and round, evolving and dynamic. Typicality: types, stereotypes, and archetypes. The hero and the anti-hero. Character construction: prosopography and etopeia. The relevance of detail and fragment: characterizing and revealing detail (anagnoristic). Applications (and examples) in informative journalistic writing.

6. The tradition of narrative journalism: the 'new journalism'
6.1 The American tradition: the birth of pop culture and the emergence of new media and new journalists explaining the social transformation of the 60s and 70s: The New Yorker, Esquire, and Rolling Stone. John Hersey, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion. The birth of the tradition of the non-fiction novel: Truman Capote (In Cold Blood) and Norman Mailer (The Armies of the Night, The Executioner's Song).
6.2 The Latin American school: Rodolfo Walsh, Gabriel García Márquez and the NPI Foundation. Tomás Eloy Martínez. The tradition today (Leila Guerrero, Martín Caparrós, Julio Villanueva Chang and the main magazines and media).
6.3 The European school: Günter Wallraff, Oriana Fallaci, Roberto Saviano.
6.4 Narrative journalism in Spain and Catalonia: from the manuals of Rafael de Mainar and the school of El Debate to the innovative journalism of 1930s Barcelona. José María Carretero and the graphic magazines. The journalism of Irene Polo; Josep Maria Planas, Eugeni Xammar, Agustí Calvet, and Carles Sentís. Contributions from the Transition: M. Vicent, Maruja Torres, Montserrat Roig, Baltasar Porcel, Manu Leguineche, M. Vázquez Montalbán, etc.

7. The informative interview and the character interview and their variants.
History of the genre and its constant and variable characteristics of function and form. The journalistic method: sources and work design. The ethnographic approach: the field and the rules. The journalist's responsibility: prejudices and stereotypes. Method: observation and interview. Perspective: authorship.

The chronicle and its range.
History of the genre and its constant and variable characteristics of function and form. The journalistic method: sources and work design. The ethnographic approach: the field and the rules. The journalist's responsibility: prejudices and stereotypes. Method: observation and interview. Perspective: authorship.

The report.
History of the genre and its constant and variable characteristics of function and form. The journalistic method: sources and work design. The ethnographic approach: the field and the rules. The journalist's responsibility: prejudices and stereotypes. Method: observation and interview. Perspective: authorship.

Other genres of journalistic quality with informative proximity.
Analysis, report, and genres of costumbrismo: sketch, portrait, and article on customs.

PRACTICES

I. Of instrumental nature
Instrumental practices are not assessed with the same weight as graded tests, but they are part of classroom work which, at the end of the course, also accounts for up to 15% of the practical grade. Four of these practices will be assessed.
A. Informative writing: writing texts with quotes and sources, articulation of scene and summary, use of connectors, construction of illocutionary attributions, ideological designations, and context expansions. Practice of textualizing recordings.
B. Scene and dialogue: collection of idiolect, rhythm, forms of dialogue, function of live dialogue in a narrative. Writing the scene as a descriptive and narrative construction: detail and fragment. Character characterization.
C. Portrait: prosopography and etopeia. Figurative, symbolic, impressionistic, expressionistic portrait. The character and their depth: types and stereotypes (and the substratum of archetypes). Round and flat characters, evolving and static, main and secondary.
D. Plot: generating narrative tension and rhythm in the narrative: Relationship between story time and narrative time. Rhythm as alternation of summary and scene in the writing of journalistic quality genres.

II. Journalistic genres: the core of the subject in the practical part.
A. Informative chronicle (3 practices, the last two graded).
B. Informative interview (2 practices, the last graded).
C. Character/personality interview (1 practice, graded).
D. Report (1 practice, graded).

The course will have approximately 30 weeks over the two semesters.