3 books you should read especially if you are studying journalism
Now that I am in the last year of my career in journalism, I would like to recommend 3books that were very helpful for me to understand the journalism genres and how they work.
Cold Blood by Truman Capote
This non-fiction novel was written by journalist Truman Capote. This novel took more than 5 years to be completed. The report narrates the events that took place before, during, and after the murder of the Clutter family. The impressive thing about this novel is how a report is being built, the diversity of sources and documents that contributed to the realization of this. The detail that the author takes in narrating the work from different points of view provides a perfect example of a genre that is the “reportage”.
Chronicle of A Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
This is a chronicle made by a Latin American author. To contextualize Gabriel García Márquez belonged to the generation of magical realism. A generation of journalists that the striking thing was the exaggeration and fantasy at the time of narrating the events. Chronicle of an announced death is a clear example of what a chronicle is like narrated from different points of view. Without losing objectivity, the author manages to detail the settings and characters in a sordidly exaggerated way. The narration starts from different points that many times it can be confusing to follow the thread of the story, but many times that is the intention of the author.
Story of a Castaway by Gabriel García Márquez
To be honest, this author is not one of my favorite authors, but I had to learn and read his works to know the journalistic work behind them.
This work is a fictionalized report by the author that its protagonist Luis Alejandro Velasco has proclaimed a hero in Colombia that ends with an unexpected turn in the story.
The chronicle and the report are the most complex journalistic genres at the time of telling the narrative, these three examples that I have put here serve as an example to see the different ways on how stories can be told without losing objectivity and as the main objective to inform events.
