Josep Maria Planes, a model for learning journalism

Abstract

Journalism is experiencing in the 21st century a widespread disorientation with alarmist speeches about the end of the press that discourage the students and teachers of this university degree. In order to deal with this despondency, teaching innovation in journalism is focused today on the future challenges of the digital revolution. This paper posits, however, that innovation can also be achieved through a knowledge of tradition. Here we explain the experience of the University of Vic (UVic) in its attempt to motivate students through the study of a close and exceptional historical figure: the local journalist Josep Maria Planes (1907-1936), who was killed for reporting on the anarchist urban pistolerismo or hired-gunman violence before the Spanish Civil War. A study is made of whether the ideas taught by Planes are still valid and whether the testimony of his life fits in with today’s university education. Since he lost his life at the age of 29, his biography may arouse students’ intellectual interest.

KEYWORDS: investigative journalism, teaching innovation, history of journalism, Catalonia, social journalism.