Go, live it, and tell it. The benefits of an ethnographical approach to quality journalism

Abstract

Gabriel García Márquez summarized journalism using three verbs: go, live it and tell it (Gayà Morlà, 2015). These three actions are the pillars of journalism promoted by the Gabo Journalism Foundation. They formulate a way of understanding journalism which assumes that the journalistic narrative is “a cultural mediation of a symbolic and interpretive nature” (Vidal Castell, 2000). Its function is to organize our communal relationship with the world. This approach is markedly different from the positivist vision. This article, based on Bellaterra Tradition’s contributions (Garde Cano, 2022), argues that the journalism promoted by the Foundation incorporates, de facto, the ethnographic approach. This emerges as a mark of quality. The approach should be considered not only as a method, but as a methodology. It is argued that quality journalism integrates, per se, an ethnographic epistemology. This is a reflective methodology that allows consideration of the construction of perspective and the deconstruction of privilege. It is also an immersive method which is the only way to understand in order to explain. In the methodology section, a guide has been created. This allows the ethnographic frame of a quality journalistic text to be identified and analysed. This guide is tested using three articles that have all won the Gabo Foundation prize.