MADRID, Spain.
On November 28 Crítica magazine celebrated its centenary with a round table at the Bellas Artes Center in Madrid.
The commemoration of the centenary of this publication, the oldest magazine of Spain and Europe run by women, as its current director Manuela Aguilera mentioned, included contributions from Rosa Capel, Maria Asunción Ortiz, Consuelo Flecha, and Edurne Arbeloa.
"I bring in my heart all those women who made the magazine possible year after year in each historical moment," said Manuela Aguilera to start the event. "These women were convinced that knowledge, communication, and information contain the seed of the powerful transformation of the human mind and heart. These courageous women decided to study and write to regain their irreplaceable role in history, to turn the inhospitable and icy competitive world into one where solidarity, generosity, truth-seeking, and humanization would be the predominant values, where faith and culture --two key areas of creative freedom and meaning for me- would dialogue," she said.
Then Manuela Aguilera recalled the names of the directors of the journal during its hundred years, an unbroken chain: Ariel Bailón, Mariana Ruiz Vallecillo, Victoria Montiel, María Carbajo de Prat, Laura Luque, Isabel del Castillo, María Josefa Grosso, M ª Dolores Gómez Molleda, María Dolores de Asís, María Isabel Sancho, Mercedes Gómez del Manzano, Francisca Rosique, Marisa Rodríguez, and Rosario Marín.
"Crítica, a place to think"
Rosa CapelThe first of the four speakers at the roundtable was Rosa Capel, Professor of Modern History at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, one of the first experts in the history of women in Spain. She valued the significance of a magazine made by women in the early twentieth century. She also contextualized education in the late nineteenth century in Spain, at the heart of government policy and framed the conflict between secularism and religion, which increased in the early twentieth century.
She also analyzed the appearance of a renewing Catholicism that took on a modern and more lay pedagogy and reacted against models that encouraged female frivolity. They did not accept the proposals of lay schools proclaiming emancipation without a moral framework and displaying anarchic behavior.
The distinguished historian highlighted the Catholic institutions of the time dedicated to the workers who came from different social classes and were identified by their intellectual interests. She recognized Pedro Poveda and the members of the Teresian Association within this group, who were among the first University graduates and Ph.D. recipients. She likened the interest of Pedro Poveda College to that of the English-speaking world. She recognized the expansion of the Teresian Work, creating Alumnae Associations, Improvement Centers and Study Circles (especially teachers), which is the context in which Crítica was born.
M ª Asunción Ortiz, historian and director of the Historical Archive of the Teresian Association, spoke of the origins of the Crítica as a newsletter in Linares in 1913, and she described the various stages through which it has passed.
Mª Asunción Ortiz
She highlighted the elements that supported the idea of Pedro Poveda at the beginning of the Teresian Work: The Academies (in 1913 there were three) Pedagogical Centers and a journal. A newsletter of the Academy of Linares was launched and later it was published on a weekly basis for all the Academies during the first three years. The first issue was dated October 5, 1913 and the the director was Araceli Bailon. "The newsletter was created as a means of communication among the Academies, as a broadcast window, a space for new writers, mainly female," she said. It had different sections. The second phase came after a difficult transition and it continued being published until September 1921, when it started a new phase.
Consuelo Flecha, Professor of Theory and History of Education and researcher of issues of feminism and education at the University of Seville, spoke of the women who made the magazine in its early days. For her, remembering those women is an opportunity and a duty of justice. They were modern, professional and had a public role.
Manuela Aguilera, Edurne Albeola, and Consuelo FlechaThen Professor Flecha spoke of some women linked to the origin and early Crítica: Araceli Bailón, Mariana Ruiz Vallecillo, Victoria Montiel, María Carbajo de Prat, Laura Luque, Isabel del Castillo, María Josefa Grosso and M ª Dolores Gómez Molleda, who renewed the format and contents. Each and all of them collectively "show the professional quality concerns, scientific training, contribution to society ... " concluded Consuelo Flecha.
Professor Flecha also recognized the renewing Catholic associations as an effective means for women and women's issues in those decades. In this context she highlighted the Teresian Association as an association of culture which gives rise to a magazine run by women, and mostly written by women, placing emphasis on issues of education in private and public schools.
Edurne Arbeloa journalist, contributor to Crítica and writer of a section of CNN International, spoke about the relationship between women and journalism in Spain today. She discussed their employment situation and its evolution. She said, "women in journalism are many but still few reach leadership positions." She backed her contribution by providing statistical information. Currently 70% of journalism students are women, but in newsrooms they represent 40%, and in management positions only 20%. She explained that this situation is similar in almost all professions.
Epílogue to a tribute
The closing ceremony was conducted by Manuela Aguilera who read a magnificent text (published in full), which was strongly applauded by those present in the room.
"It must be said that during these 100 years of existence, Crítica magazine has seen how journalism has been transformed by technology.
I'll do a little exercise along the lines of the Roman god Janus, the god of beginnings and endings, of all that ended and began, the one who had two faces, one looking to the past and the other to the future. This means that just a basic route, from the printing press to the laser beam, passing through the wireless telegraph to the telephone, fax teletype, linotype to off-set, up until the arrival of email or the development of web pages show how print journalism in general --let alone the audiovisual - has experienced a process of scientific and technical advances of this century. And Crítica has gone through all of them.
If we look to the past, journalist Eusebio Blasco (1844-1903) in the late nineteenth century, with an unusual sense, perceives that technology applied to the press will be more than a change of wrapping, of continent. It will definitely influence the content. He doesn’t go so far as to say that "the medium is the message" (it will take more than half a century for this sentence to be pronounced by McLuhan) but he dares to say:
The newspaper that was going from one point to another in stagecoach cannot be done in the same way as the one that goes in the boxcar of the railway and is delivered within twenty-four hours to readers who previously were separated from us so many miles that would take three or four days to reach them. Today everything is done with steam; electricity ... and the steam and electricity are already in our brains, just as there is physical steam in the locomotives and telegraph wires on the roads.
I myself, if I look back to just 20 years ago, I remember that I designed the magazine -- because I also did the typesetting in huge galleys of paper with typo meters and letterset. And I still remember, too, when my beloved Olivetti disappeared from my desk and in its place appeared a brand new computer, which I looked at with suspicion and later it ended up conquering me.
The newspapers and magazines of the 90s and the printing arts were more like those of the late nineteenth century than the current digital newspapers and magazines. That is, there have been more changes in the last 20 years than in the last 5 centuries.
Newsrooms today have changed. Crítica’s newsroom has changed, too. Today, thanks to desktop publishing, we do everything on the computer screen and we have a website where readers can read the magazine from anywhere in the world because we are a magazine that still exists in the market in two formats: on paper and in digital form.
Similarly, just like during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, people spoke of the death of painting because of the emergence of photography, of the death of theater because of the emergence of film, of the death of cinema because of the emergence television and other similar examples. Today many speak of the death of traditional media on paper because of the emergence of digital media. Right now, the latest studies on the subject, such as the one conducted by the Association for Media Research in October 2012, tell us:
That 54.4 % of those under age 13 always read in digital format.
And that paper is the format of choice among those who wish to learn about topics in depth.
This is the great crossroads where journalism is today: to the general crisis, both economic and political in the West, we need to add the crisis of a profession, shaken like no other, by the digital tsunami, which is not supported by paper as the sole intermediary.
Should we continue printing on paper or go completely digital? Crítica magazine is not out of this debate. The content of this debate is not just a change of support but also a new way of reading, writing, and a new way of understanding, of accessing knowledge that can cause some dizziness.
I believe, however, that whatever future we are led to through this reflection, the key is two-fold: first, do not be afraid to change and, second, keep believing in the power of the written word.
Why do I say not to be afraid of change? Because changes create great uncertainty and the possibility of moving toward a complete transformation of the support of our magazine raises many questions... This is not the time to list them but it is very important to eradicate that fear ... because fear is a burden that impoverishes us, dwarfs us, consumes and devours creativity. From experience I know there is only one way to get rid of it: not trying to change that which is feared, but our way of looking at it.
This reflection we will not leave us intact but unharmed, I'm sure. As for the power of the written word goes, journalism is a vocation and a modest and annoying job that, beyond its power to persuade, inform, report, mobilize, move ... it always spurs the reporter to ask the same question: can writing do something to change this world of ours flooded with loneliness, hostility, injustice ... a world determined to make us heirs of mediocrity, superficiality, the rule of money, physical and moral violence, unemployment, the wrenching inequality, political and social corruption, mistrust, xenophobia, racism and lack of solidarity? Yes, without that faith we cannot exercise this profession. Writing is necessary and, of course, it can change things! In the course of history it may not have done so directly and radically because it needs time to reach the reader's consciousness. But ultimately, you can influence decisions, attitudes and actions. Many are the journalists who gave their lives for their beliefs. They gave their life so that their work would not only report on what happens, but to expose evil, heal reality, and make a more humane world.
As I said at the beginning of this act, today the human being is permeated by information overload, invaded by words that soon lose their value and strength. And yet, that excess, that overproduction should not discourage us. Above the technology and media, beyond the explosive fashion of global conversation and social networking, against the naysayers who insist on saying that this is a dying profession, journalism will remain for a strong reason: citizens, increasingly overwhelmed by information overload, need discerning professionals, i.e. critical thinkers, in order to do a complicated selection exercise, prioritization and interpretation of information. So journalism is and will remain an essential public service.
And the journalist will continue considering: From where do I write? Do I write from a distance or up close? From my past or from my present? From the least or from my quiet little house? ... Because the one who doesn’t ask these questions, who writes hiding behind the ink, behind the costume of pretty words that do not lead him or her to a commitment has nothing to do with journalism. That script is useless.
The real journalist, a mediator of freedom and utopia, will continue traveling this unique path that builds reality within the train in which everyone is traveling. Through its windows nature offers a wonderful feast ... and while some close the curtains to avoid the sun, others for a brief nap, others not to get distracted, others because they do not like the picture ... the journalist is one who is completely immersed in the landscape. And he or she communicates what they see, honestly, through some words that they are determined to turn into commitment and dedication, because, as I said in my words of greeting: to communicate is a form of love ... The words, well written and pronounced, are the drawbridge to those who read and listen to us. They become "precious glasses of meaning," as St. Augustine called them; they become magic that, from time to time, allows us to touch the human soul.
If only just for that, the 100 years that Critica magazine has completed have been worthwhile. Thank you very much. "
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