The   dictatorship of the layout professional

Villagrasa, Miquel

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

newspaper interviews, produced genuine local-information. 
The seventies, according to the author, represent the most important 
moment of local-information in Barcelona. New newspapers like 
"Mundo Diario" appeared and many others enriched their 
contents. 
Política! normalisation a nd new technologies have changed the news 
panorama. The traditional sections no longer exist. Now they are wi-
der. However, the theme of "the city'' is to be fou nd in them. 
97 Splendour, misery of economic information 
XAVIER VIDAL-FOLCH 
The writer of this article begins by talking about the different stages 
that economic information has experienced from the sixties until 
the present. 
These are the ones of the economic thrust after the Francoist "Pla 
d'Estabilitació" (Stabilisation Plan); the economic framework beco-
mes more flexible. However, this comes about without freedom and 
with a press that is still gagged. Economic information is official and 
offficialist. The task of divulgation and debate grows gradually over 
the years. Weekly collaborations began in the newspapers, written by 
renowned economists. Later, the first years ofthe transition also regis-
tcred an energy crisis. The author analyses the repercussion of this 
phenomenon in the media. Investigative and critica! journalism pick 
up in the economies field. The newspapers face up to this collectively. 
The "Associació de Periodistes Econòmics de Catalunya" (The Asso-
ciation of Economic Journalists of Catalonia) comes into being 
(I 986). At present, the internationalisation o f the Spanish a nd Cata-
lan economy generates complex phenomena: dependency on the ex-
terior and the power of the multinationals. 123 
110 The dictatorship of the layout professionals 
MIQUEL VILLAGRASA 
In a period o f ten a nd a halfyears layout has shown itself to be an es-
sentia! technique in a current publication. The author stat~s that lay-
ANNALS DEL PERIODISME CATALÀ 
124 
out has made it possible to order the contents of publications and 
also reduce the production process by means of the use of thc so-
called pre-maquette. 
The rationalisation o f information that was appearing on the pages o f 
the newspapers during thosc years was largely due to the evolution 
of layout. 
The author makes a review o f the diffcrent stages that layout has been 
through, f rom the first generation of layout professionals, very knowl-
edgeable about the profession, passing through the diagram profes-
sionals that were responsible for having gi ven unity to thc contents, to 
the designers that corne from the so-called third generation. At pre-
sent, design comes partly from business criteria. The layout professio-
nal finds it difficult to evade the established model, as this includes 
adopting orders that are not to be fou nd in thc computcr. The use of 
technology and the work of other graphic techniques have conside-
rably reduced the responsibilities of layout professionals. 
ANNALS DEL PERIODISME CATALÀ 


The dictatorship of the layout professionals

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Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert