Journalism, a constantly changing profession

Since 1964, at the initiative of the president of the Union of Journalists (UPA), Hugo Ordoñez, every January 13 the Azuayo Journalist's Day is remembered. The date was chosen as a tribute to the day the first issue of the newspaper "El Eco Azuay" circulated: January 13, 1828. 

Since then, every year, the work carried out by reporters who are in the streets is remembered. This, in addition to the bases with which journalism should be developed, is the only thing that has not changed. The rest: the media, the channels and the tools have evolved giving another face to what the public reads, watches and listens to. The reason for the changes came, a decade ago, with technology. In the province and the country, the transformation arrived a little later, especially with the pandemic, which forced the media to turn to digital. 

Today, if you look at the process and transmission of the news, in fact, the tools are different. The journalists of yesteryear, sometimes, look in amazement at the mutations. Before there were cassette recorders, big microphones and notebooks. 

Cell phones, teeny tripods, and lavalier microphones dominate these days. Enough that and social networks to massify the event. What does not change, it is insisted, are those pedestals that support a necessary task: ethics. 

"Now there are many tools that make information richer. There are graphics, there are videos that detail a fact even more, but what does not change is the ethics with which this profession should be practiced," said Edgar Cordero, a teacher of digital journalism of the Catholic University of Cuenca. 

Cordero is one of the city's teachers who has specialized (and continues to specialize because technology changes) in digital areas because that is where the trend and consumption of information goes. 

Traditional media, although they remain, are few in Cuenca. Screens, social networks and a generation that grew up among what is considered to be the most current have made the people who manage the media use those channels. 

And within that same generation, there are the young people who are training as journalists. Based on their own environment, they think about the technology that exists today to report something, tell a story or make a situation visible. 

"I like journalism because I want to tell stories, I want to show things that are not shown, I want to be able to do something through what I know. I want to gain experience and have an independent media outlet in the future," said Emily Campoverde, a student at seventh cycle of the School of Communication of the University of Azuay.

In that same fight, and with the same desire, is Tamara Paucar, a fifth cycle student of the journalism career at the Catholic University of Cuenca. "I want to continue gaining experience with different media and I want to learn new digital tools to do a good job, which is to report responsibly." said the journalist in training.