Concept in Definition ABC

An Editorial is one of the many journalistic genres, but which is mainly characterized by its subjectivity, if we compare it with the news genre for example, since it is the collective opinion of a media, of a newspaper more commonly and that follows the ideological line of this on a journalistic fact of current and relevance that demands the opinion, explanation and evaluation of the medium about it.

This type of article occupies a preferential place within the structure of the newspaper and almost never carries a signature, for the reason that I mentioned above. His drafting It is usually in charge of journalists with great experience, with the capacity to analyze reality, and are known in the jargon as "editorialists." Generally, this position can be filled by managers or heads of sections of publications, whether newspapers or magazines.

The editorial, together with the opinion column, are the two formats of the genre precisely called “opinion”, the genre with the highest marks of subjectivity, since the value judgments and the "points of view" of the writer are reflected in the text, and are the essence of said gender. It is common that, about a topic of social relevance, content is generated in the medium both informative (news, chronicles), dialogic (interviews, reports) and opinions (columns, editorials). The finished treatment of the topic in particular in the three genres, in addition to marking the importance of the event or event, allows the reader to have information, the word of witnesses or specialists on the subject (from the interviews) and the point of view of specialized analysts (from the opinion).

Among the main functions of the editorial are to explain the facts, contextualize the subject to be more graphic, predict its consequences and formulate judgments, because it is the section of the newspaper to which readers will always address when they want to receive more complete information on the topic of the moment.

For example, there is a strong institutional crisis in the country that caused the resignation of the president, it will not be in the daily chronicle where the The reader will find the essential answers that concern him, but it will be the editorial that gives him a present and future panorama of what it will happen.

There are different types of publishers: explanatory (they explain, the opinion is not deduced directly), thesis or opinion (there is a clear opinion in favor or against), informative (their intention is make the subject known) interpretative (promotes causes, effects, conjectures), action and conviction (both try to persuade the already formed opinion of the reader).

But there is also another meaning of the editorial term which is very common for us and which is used to refer to the company in charge of distributing and publishing writings of any kind. This type of industry began to proliferate from the beginning of the 19th century, although its boom saw it only in the mid-twentieth century, with the implosion of what Theodor Adorno called "cultural industries", is it say, the industrialization of cultural products: books, films and music They are mass-produced, designed for the great mass of consumers, just as if goods of the type such as refrigerators, slippers or clothes were produced. However, a fundamental milestone for the expansion of this type of industry was undoubtedly the invention of the movable type printing press, created by Johannes Gutenberg, the mentor of this type of printing press that laid the foundations of the current publishing industries but also of the massification of the means of communication graphics.

The production The publisher involves the following process: the author will contact the publisher to see if the content of his book is of interest to him, if there is any, he passes to the printing press so that it takes shape, then the publisher sells it to the bookstores that will be in charge of marketing them to the final consumer: the readers. Even with the advance of the computing and new technologies, books, despite many negative predictions about their future, continue to be produced, the best still exist sellers (books with more than a million copies sold) although publishers have sought alternatives by adapting to the new ways of reading that technologies are imposed: for example, the so-called “ebooks” (electronic books) that can be bought in virtual bookstores, downloaded on computers, notebooks, tablets or kindles (special devices for reading books) and read digitally, without the need to carry stacks of books in support paper.