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 communication medium, of a newspaper more commonly and that follows the ideological line of this on a newsworthy and relevant journalistic fact 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. Its writing is usually in charge of journalists with great experience, with the ability to analyze reality, and they 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 greatest marks of subjectivity, since the value judgments and the “points of view” of the writer are reflected in the text, and they are the essence of that genre. It is common for informational content (news, chronicles), dialogic content (interviews, reports) and opinion content (columns, editorials) to be generated in the media about a topic of social relevance. The finished treatment of the subject 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 (based on 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 make judgments, because it is the section of the newspaper to which readers will always turn when they want to receive more complete information about 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 reader will find the essential answers that concern him, but rather the editorial will give him a present and future panorama of what will happen.
There are different types of editorials: explanatory (they explain, the opinion is not deduced directly), from thesis or opinion (there is a clear opinion in favor or against), informative (their intention is to make the subject known), interpretive (promotes causes, effects, conjectures), action and conviction (both try to persuade the reader's already formed opinion).
But there is also another meaning of the editorial term which is very common for us and which is used to name 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 peak was only seen in the middle of the 20th century, with the implosion of what Theodor Adorno called "cultural industries", that is, the industrialization of cultural products. : books, movies and music 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 industries 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 graphic media.
Editorial production 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, it goes to the printing press to take shape, then the publisher sells it to the bookstores that will be in charge of marketing them to the final consumer: readers. Even with the advancement of computers and new technologies, books, despite many negative predictions about their future, continue to be produced, there are still best sellers (books with more than a million copies sold) although publishers have sought alternatives adapting to the new ways of reading imposed by technologies: 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 on paper supports.
