The chronicle is a literary work that narrates a historical event respecting the chronological order in which it happened, the latter being the differential feature of the artistic piece. If a narrative boasts of being a chronicle and does not follow this condition sine qua nonIt is not a true chronicle.
Generally and traditionally, this modality is narrated in the first or third person, by an eyewitness or contemporary to the event in question. According to the characteristics of each writer, it is observed that the vast majority of the events of the Chronicles They are reported in the past tense, although in some cases it is possible to speculate with the narration in the present, almost in "real time".
The chronicle, in addition, it is one of the most traditional genres within the exercise of journalism. A journalist worth his salt must know and handle to piacere this type of content, since from the beginning of the profession until today they are an integral and very important part of any newspaper, newscast or information medium. For many experts, the first pieces of real journalism have been the chronicles. In this sense, the texts produced by the chroniclers who accompanied the explorers, travelers and great navigators of antiquity stand out. Thus, the chronicles of Marco Polo marked a historical milestone; in slightly later times, the diaries of the logs of Christopher Columbus's first trip to America and, above all, the long account of Pigafetta in the expedition of Magellan and Elcano constitute sublime journalistic texts in the format of Chronicles.
In journalism, the chronicles have a precise classification, in yellow and white. And for anyone who manages common sense and some knowledge of gender, the differentiation will be very clear, if not the clarification goes.
It is known as yellow to those chronicles that present or narrate a fact from the most absolute subjectivism. For example, in the case of a traffic accident, the journalist, in addition to the details inherent to the place, date and time in which the accident occurred, will include the voice of an eyewitness, who will always be a common citizen, who occasionally or not, he passed through the area and had to witness the event.
Meanwhile, the white chronicles present a more objective material and usually summon the voice of some subject specialized in the subject they address.
Unlike what happens with another of the journalistic genres par excellence, such as the news, the chronicle, uses simple, personal, direct, subjective language, admitting the use and abuse, if you will, of adjectives, something unexpected in the construction of a news item.
A concrete example of what a chronicle is is the work written by the famous Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, baptized A Chronicle of a Death Foretold and that surely more than one will have read in school or in the journalism chair, if the vice of the profession emerges.
Can the posts on modern blogs or sporadic comments on social networks like Twitter or Facebook be considered true chronicles? The open debate in terms of Web 2.0 has motivated the need to postulate the potential existence of a "journalism 2.0", in which any ordinary citizen is capable of becoming a fleeting journalist, with the possibility of "narrating" or "inform" in absolute real time. The simplicity and the almost absence of concrete objectivity of the journalistic chronicle facilitates the adoption of this genre as the ideal element for the occasional journalist to describe a novelty, from the keyboard of his laptop or from the touch screen of the cell phone. However, other experts disbelieve the possibility of "chronicle 2.0", since they postulate that, in reality, it is an absolutely new and unprecedented genre in the history of communications, which is why another literary figure should be used. . However, beyond formal opinions, new technologies now allow the chronic becomes a journalistic genre of great validity, easily disseminated and with the possibility of reaching many potential readers interested in obtaining information in a concrete and brief way at the same time, anywhere and through resources for immediate implementation.
