Nieman Foundation at Harvard
HOME
          
LATEST STORY
Young journalists will reimagine a better press
ABOUT                    SUBSCRIBE
Dec. 15, 2010, 11 a.m.

Juanita León on independent journalism and La Silla Vacía, one of Colombia’s first political blogs

Editor’s Note: Our sister publication Nieman Reports is out with its winter issue, which focuses on changes in beat reporting. We’re highlighting a few entries that connect with subjects we follow in the Lab, but we encourage you to read the whole issue. In this piece Juanita León, a 2007 Nieman Fellow, writes about creating a political news blog in Colombia.

I am convinced that the Internet is changing journalism in ways we never could have imagined only a few years ago. The idea of the reported story as being the basic unit of journalism is being shaken by the Web’s way of sharing information, and along with this change comes a rethinking about the concept of the beat itself.

A year and a half ago I set up an investigative political blog called La Silla Vacía (“The Empty Seat”). It is a website dedicated to covering how power is exercised in Colombia and, as such, it serves as a discussion platform about public issues in my country. With a staff of seven — and about 60 unpaid contributors — La Silla Vacía publishes stories that before we existed were not being told. They are the stories that lie behind the news media’s typical daily political reporting.

In the United States, political blogs are too numerous to count. But in Colombia, La Silla Vacía is the first such experiment with sustainable independent journalism. Here, news organizations are concentrated among a few business conglomerates and families with political backgrounds so a news reporting outlet set up by journalists is truly innovative.

Keep reading »

POSTED     Dec. 15, 2010, 11 a.m.
Show tags
 
Join the 60,000 who get the freshest future-of-journalism news in our daily email.
Young journalists will reimagine a better press
“The newest generation of journalists will not give in to pessimism about whether their profession still matters in an age of cynicism about the press.”
Journalists explain legislative procedure
“If civic-affairs news is the broccoli of American journalism, then coverage of legislative procedure is the unsalted lima bean.”
The publisher is always right
“In 2025, unless we come together as a journalism field and course-correct away from information consolidation controlled by the ultra-wealthy, it will get worse.”