20 Minutes, a Reference for Free Press in Spain and its Contribution to Online Journalism: From News Organizer to Dialogue Genres

Abstract

With its emergence at the beginning of this century, free press convulsed the media landscapeand thus forced the conventional press to undergo editorial changes. Based on seven in-depthinterviews with 20 Minutos responsible at the time, this paper describes the organization andcontents of 20 Minutos, the first Spanish newspaper to merge paper and web press, even beforethe advent of social networks. 20 Minutos can be better understood as a news organizer thanas a traditional mass-media. Its agenda-setting, with cross-sections, can be seen today on nativedigital newspapers home. The level of interaction increases with the gestation of dialogic genres:chats, surveys, or live online interviews. The results also show the absence of an ideologyor that the company owner is an important communication group of Norway. The possibility,for the first time, of instantly knowing the traffic of each news on the web press determinesthe newspaper. Its pioneering nature brought formal and structural changes to journalism thatwere transferred to the web press and endured over time, such as the power of clicks, theengagement or a more extensive agenda-setting, and more dialogic spaces that arouses interestin participation by the reader.