The New Latin American Journalism: the profile genre in Leila Guerriero

Abstract

The journalistic profile is one of the great genres of the New Journalism, and of Anglo-Saxon journalism as well. In the last three decades, the profile has experienced tremendous growth within narrative journalism in the Spanish language, and one of its contributors has been Leila Guerriero. The objective of this doctoral thesis is to analyse, describe and model the gender of the profile in Leila Guerriero’s work. To place Leila Guerriero’s work in context, this study first addresses a series of general theoretical questions about narrative journalism and its genres; and in particular the profile, which is defined in the field of New Latin American Journalism. Second, it focuses on the figure of Leila Guerriero, her biography, her work as editor, anthologist and teacher, her journalistic work and her methodology. And finally, it exhaustively studies the journalistic profiles of Leila Guerriero from the stylistic and thematic point of view. The results of our study have allowed us to demonstrate that Guerriero´s profiles are linked to the New Journalism of the USA, while at the same time they provide a distinct, personal vision of such journalism that brings it closer to the domain of literature.