Ryszard Kapuściński and the Fierce Debate on “Magical Journalism”
Ryszard Kapuściński and the Fierce Debate on “Magical Journalism”

Summary/Abstract: As a journalistic genre, reportage is determined by the context in which it is produced. It transports the reader to a specific time and place, but, unlike the news, it does not depend on current events. Therefore, a reporter is not constrained by brevity and, like any other author, aims to develop their own style. This was the case of Ryszard Kapuściński, who was the Polish Press Agency’s only correspondent in Latin America from 1967 to 1972. After this experience, Kapuściński returned several times to the continent from 2001 to 2005 and gave lectures for the Fundacion Nuevo Periodismo Iberomericano, founded by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His reportages about the continent are considered highly political (in fact Artur Domosławski describes him as a naive “true believer” in communism during his stay as a correspondent). This article, however, views the significance of his time on the new continent from a different perspective. Was the most important Latin American influence on Kapuściński actually the style and genre that he developed as he explored a new kind of reportage: ‘‘magical journalism”?

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