“Journalism helps people by explaining realities and denouncing injustices,” highlighted Enric Sierra, deputy director of ‘La Vanguardia’, in an exclusive meeting with subscribers held this afternoon at Casa Seat in Barcelona and which was moderated by the journalist Mayka Navarro.
Regular moderator in these talks, this time it was Sierra’s turn to be the protagonist. Mayka, who has defined him as “the plumber” of the newsroom, the one who helps solve problems, has asked him why he chose journalism. “I am interested in explaining everything that happens and trying to get closer to the truth,” responded Sierra, who confessed that she had always had the vocation to help people “and through journalism it can be done: explaining realities, denouncing injustices and trying to “do our part in solving problems.”
Sierra recalled her beginnings, at the age of 14, on the local radio station in Arenys de Mar. There she still continues with a Sunday program that has been running for more than 30 years. “Local media gives you a lot of training and you learn the basics of journalism.” He has also worked at RTVE (he collaborated with Jesús Hermida) and at ‘Avui’ and was one of the creators of ’20 minutes’, the first free newspaper in Spain.
All of this baggage that he brought to La Vanguardia to promote the newspaper’s website, born in July 1995 and which had only eight editors when he arrived. Sierra has recalled the first video that was broadcast, that of the robbery at the Tous house, and also the most viewed in its history, strange as it may seem, that of an Abyssinian fish recorded in the depths of the sea by a bathyscaphe.
Among the many functions he performs at the newspaper is also, together with the director Jordi Juan, that of protecting the editors from the pressure of those people who have been bothered by an article. “When you ask if what has been published is true or false, there is usually silence. And this silence is revealing.”
Regarding the future of paper, Sierra explained that each format, digital and printed, has its own reading experience and that each subscriber and reader can choose. He has admitted that the completely free policy when the digital editions appeared had been a media mistake: “Serious and rigorous information is not free.”
And to a journalism student who asked him for advice on the future of the profession, he recommended that he be versatile, be curious to learn and try to master new technologies. “If the journalist continues to have control of the information and mastery of the tools to reach readers, then we have a job for many years.”
