Three of BBC Mundo’s top journalists – Enric Botella, Antía Castedo, and Liliet Heredero - spoke to an auditorium of students at Queretaro University about how storytelling has changed in the last decade, and how they can be a part of the new model- finding and forming engaging and informative narratives.
With people increasingly turning to social media for their information, the landscape for news has changed enormously – so how are journalists supposed to compete and keep up? BBC Mundo says it’s simple: you have to give readers something more - a new angle, a new focus, a new lens on the issue.
With news being cut up into tweet-sized pieces and the news cycle faster than ever, it’s a perpetual challenge to hunt down the right sources, to get the crux of the story, to see the bigger picture, and to take the long view. Context is key, and understanding a place is the key to telling its story.
But, as well as challenges, the digital revolution offers opportunities: video content is a new and exciting frontier for news outlets, creating space for content from serious mini-documentaries to informal explorations of social issues.
The main piece of advice? Learn by doing – and read! Read all the newspapers you can, and all of the literature you can get your hands on: to tell stories, you have to know stories!
Hay Joven, specifically for university students, will continue across the weekend, exploring genres from the essay to the graphic novel, and covering themes from human rights to creationism.
Events range from film screenings to workshops, and students will get to hear from experts and writers like Argentine journalist Andrés Oppenheimer, British mathematician Marcus de Sautoy, and Bogotá39 writers Emiliano Monge, Eduardo Rabasa, and Felipe Restrepo Pombo.