Cabanyalitzats

Abstract

Cabanyalitzats is a digital publication specialized in the Cabanyal neighborhood. This neighborhood of seafaring tradition located in the city of Valencia a few meters from the beach La Malvarrosa has been for years subject to political will. In 1997 the old Valencian government announced the PEPRI an urban plan that sought to demolish more than 1600 houses to prolong the avenue Blasco Ibañez. During this period of time, the neighbours grouped in neighbourhood platforms fought for the survival of their neighbourhood and to keep alive all the houses, many of them in Art Noveau style. Also, other institutions such as the World Monument Found or Tribunal Superior de Justicia described the plan as a plunder and managed to delay its execution. Today, years later the neighbourhood goes through a new stage. In 2015, with the arrival of the new government, the plan was annulled and the rehabilitation process started. At first glance this change is positive especially considering that the neighbourhood has quite high vulnerability indexes. However, many voices warn that rehabilitation it entails another threat to gentrification.

This term refers to a socio-economic process characterized by the displacement and replacement of the original population of an area by a higher social class. In addition, there is a transformation in the dynamics of urban growth characterized by the emergence of hotel businesses or focused on leisure and tourism. Given the activity of the neighbourhood in all its social, cultural and political spheres, it has been considered that its agenda is of journalistic interest and may provide a sufficient volume of content to devote a means of communication. It should be noted that his digital character responds to the current communicative picture led by new technologies and the internet which have modified the journalistic world and have given way to digital journalism defined by three unique aspects: hypertextuality, interactivity and multimedia. Cabanyalitzats aims at providing information to all types of people with Internet access and with knowledge of Valencian, about the current situation and the cultural calendar of the neighborhood as well as to deepen through journalistic pieces in the subject of gentrification. This theme has, in effect, a considerable weight in the media. Likewise, the use of Valencian in all published pieces, aims to claim the use of this language in the local media. Cabanyalitzats plans to publish a minimum of three weekly publications. However, the number and content of post it depends on calendar. In order to start Cabanyalitzats it was necessary to analyze the existing models and publications related to Cabanyal to delimit with accuracy the thematic strategy and the desing of this digital publication. The analysis led to the following conclusions. On the one hand that there is no specialized media in the Cabanyal and, on the other hand, that Cabanyal neighbours get involved in the communicational processes and generate debate. They use to use social networks to generate content responding to the practise of citizen journalism. After selecting the contents, analyzing the competence and determining the objectives, the name of the publication was chosen. It was important that name included the word Cabanyal to enable the user to find easier this media and also, to identify automatically this media with the district of Cabanyal. Cabanyilzats has been designed with the platform Wix (free versión). The main colours of the website are green and blue because they predominate in the tiles of the modernist houses of the Cabanyal. As they are visually powerful, white, gray and black have been chosen for everything related to publications and texts. The site is divided into three sections: Actualitat, Agenda Cultural and Contacte. Actualitat is focused on the main news and reportages that take place in the district. The post appears in order of publication from the most recent to the oldest. In Agenda Cultural, users are provided with information as the location or the timetable about the main events in Cabanyal. Contact explains what this media is, what are his goals and the audience who is aimed. In this section readers can also contact with Cabanyalitzats sending an email to ask any type of question. It’s important to point out that all publications are provided with links and hiperlinks in order to comply with the principle of hipertextuality. The links has serves to contextualize information and address issues related to the news furthermore they are easily identifiable by the user because the text appears with underlined and he has only to press the button. In addition, all information is devoted to images and different formats are combined: video and text, audio and text...So it can be stated that Cabanyalizats and meets the multimedia requirement. Social networks Facebook and Twitter have been used to maintain interaction with the public, to initiate a direct contact with the reader and also to distribute the content. All the information post on Cabanyalizats’s website is published immediately on these social networks. As well, on the website the reader can share directly by simply clicking the button. With the goal of having a good position in Google, each post contains tags. Before starting to write, it was essential to make a research about Cabanyal (number of people, history, social problems, official data) and also about gentrification. Since gentrification is a complex issue the investigation in this area has been deeper. The next step was contact with the sources. It was not difficult because all of them accept to be interviewed. In others cases, it has been used press releases to make the news. The cost has been very low because university provides the material (camera, programs, editation tolos).Wix has been also free. Most of the expenses are related with public transport to move to the places where interviews take place or with the ticket of the train to go to university to take material. Time has been the main limitation. As the same time I was developing Cabanyalitzats, I was also doing the final project of publicity and working as a trainee in an advertising agency for that reason i could not go to events held in Cabanyal during the morning. I have had more problems linked to the technical part than problems in the textual elaboration. The result of the audiovisual reportage would improve if i had done static shot. Likewise, I think that in the interviews I have to be more concrete. I have interviews that last an hour and although they are very interesting, they have too much content and then it’s difficult to select information. All in all, it has been a good experience. I have learnt to manage the sources, to know the journalistic routine, and to realise the importance of the social networks in but also I have discovered which are my strengths and my weaknesses professional.