Yesterday, at the fourth Databeers event in Madrid, a representative from PRISA's digital analytics team, Rubén Gallardo --brilliant guy, by the way--, was asked about whether jornalists had fully succumbed to data gurus such as himself in terms of decision-making inside the newsroom.
Gallardo answered no, saying that intuition still plays a key role all around. This is interesting coming from a highly qualified professional who spends everyday on the battle for media influence frontline, but the bit that really caught my attention was his declared, heartfelt, recently-developed admiration for journalists as professionals.
When at the beginning of 2014 the director of leading Spanish newspaper El Mundo was in the process of being fired, one of the journal's best columnists, and a late joiner to the El Mundo's writer staff, Enric González, wrote a remarkable text.
It went like this --freely translated--: The man who runs this newspaper is an extraordinary journalist. Sometimes full of contradictions and incoherent, more interested in selling copies than in inspiring an ethical behavior, fixated upon following through with investigations even when he is wrong (like in most of his approach to the 11-M Madrid terrorist attacks), more faithful to liberty than to maintaining order. He leaves us this coming Sunday. As (Zhou) Enlai said, it is too early to draw a final conclusion of this event. But at some point I will have to do it and decide accordingly.
This text has stuck in my mind because of its striking honesty. I felt it was a display of opinion-based journalism at its best, the sort that feeds the admiration that a lot of people --myself included-- feel towards the --idealized-- journalism as a craft.
And then last night my wife started a conversation about mind structures and leadership styles. She had come back from a high profile training session on the subject. She mentioned analytical, process-oriented, creative or visionary, among others, as key categories. Literature on the subject also classifies leadership in participative, transactional, authoritative or laissez-faire.
But my mind flew to the fact that none of these attributes captures the all-to-powerful beauty of inspiring respect to the point of receiving full honesty back. That is, most likely, the single most precious quality that, in my view, people should try to add to their skillset when working with others in any context.
