We explain what the chronicle is and what genre it belongs to. Journalistic, literary and historical chronicle. Example of a brief chronicle.
Example of news report.What is a chronicle?
When speaking of a chronicle, it usually refers to a double narrative genre, part literary and part journalistic, since it does not have the freedom of imagination of literary fiction, but uses abundantly its formal resources to address events and characters real, true and verifiable. Gabriel García Márquez, famous Colombian journalist and writer, defined the chronicle as "a story that is true".
The origins of the word chronic go back to the Greek kronika, a word from kronos (weather), since it refers to a narration ordered according to its timeline. For this reason, the first chronicles that are known were, precisely, reports of facts ordered according to the historical moment, similar to intimate diaries or reports.
The chronicle became popular in the journalistic field from the so-called New American journalism (New Journalism), which consisted of a generation of avant-garde reporters and writers, given to the use of this genre to refresh the face of journalism. With this they were able to invert the traditional informative pyramid of Harold Lasswell's paradigm, which established the obligation of all News to contain all the pertinent information at the beginning, and then the additional content. The chronicle, on the other hand, proposes the opposite path, as literary stories do.
Currently there are academic debates about whether or not the chronicle is a literary or journalistic genre. And from the weakening of the boundaries between genders of the speech (journalism, literature, pedagogy, art, etc.) that characterizes contemporary times, this debate becomes even more difficult.
Types of Chronicle
The classification of the genre of the chronicle is always debatable. But they are usually classified according to their approach or theme, and the degree of fidelity with the historical truth they demonstrate.
- journalistic chronicle
- Sports Chronicle
- Black or events chronicle
- political chronicle
- Society Chronicle
- travel chronicle
- literary chronicle
- historical chronicle
According to their journalistic approach, the journalistic chronicles can also be classified as informative or white (greater degree of objectivity, more similar to the news) and interpretive or opinionated (investigate, interpret and explain the reason for what is narrated).
chronicle example
The following is a fragment of the chronicle of the journalist Marta Ruiz, for the newspaper Week published on 02/23/2013.
Brief chronicle of a trip to Havana (fragment)
Martha Ruiz
Two weeks ago I took a plane and went to Havana to see firsthand what is happening there. I got up early for the Hotel El Palco, in whose convention center the government-guerrilla meetings take place. Contrary to popular belief, there is little Colombian press there. That day, on the eve of the end of a round that had begun with tempers heated by the kidnapping of two policemen, there were only the correspondents from RCN and Caracol and a handful of Cuban journalists.
That morning Iván Márquez stood in front of the microphone and read the 10 minimum proposals for the political recognition of the peasants. “We always get 10,” he commented over coffee, referring to the daily ritual of presenting ideas about what his government counterpart, Humberto de la Calle, called “the divine and the human.” Márquez took advantage of the break to finish a thick cigar that had already been half smoked. At that time, the photo in which the guerrilla leader poses for the camera on a Harley Davidson motorcycle was unknown, and which confirmed, along with tobacco, that Márquez's revolution is not opposed to certain pleasures.
While the FARC go through their morning ritual, the government delegation passes by in silence, not even looking at what they consider to be a media spectacle. But journalists rack their brains trying to find a story that really arouses interest in Colombia. Despite the fact that the day of the journalist caught us over there, and that the FARC celebrated it with a mojito, and that they shouted with great enthusiasm: Long live the social communicators!, the guerrillas think that the low profile of the conversations due to a media strategy. One of the delegates from the insurgency is frankly nostalgic: “We liked the Caguán scheme better because we were closer to the journalists. Now they change them for each round.”
That afternoon I had an informal chat with Sergio Jaramillo, the High Commissioner for Peace of the Santos government. In those days, as he told me, there were very important advances in the Table on the land issue, but, respecting the rule of confidentiality, he did not mention the content. He assured me that if it continues at this pace, it is possible to reach a framework agreement in a reasonable time. When I asked him about the bad climate in the country regarding the dialogues, he did not hide his bitterness: "The urban country does not seem to care what happens in the countryside," he told me.
Of both delegations, I highlight the mutual respect with which they treat each other and the incredible discipline they have in not breaking the confidentiality of the Table, a sign that both want to take care of the process. What they do comment on is that the methodologies for approaching the issues are very different. It is something like historical materialism against Power Point.While the FARC makes long historical presentations on the land problem, which overwhelms the members of the Government, they in turn take out slides with very pragmatic figures to explain to the others how the rural market and/or the cadastre works. After all, that's what dialogue is all about.