ABSTRACT
This article presents a case study on an award-winning journalistic running story, that of the toxic spill over the Río Sonora by the Mexican digital-born news organization Proyecto Puente. This running story received the National Journalism Award in the News Coverage category in 2014 and it distinguished itself due to its emotional character. Based on quantitative and qualitative content analysis, as well as semi-structured interviews, it examines how the strategic rituals of objectivity and emotionality interacted in this running story. The results allow us to advance Tuchman and Wahl-Jorgensen’s theorizations as they warn us about the centrality of “being there” and “being the voice of those who have no voice” in the coverage of environmental disasters from a citizen perspective.
Key words
Journalism; Disaster; Objectivity; Emotionality; Mexico