The revenge of 'Jot Down' against 'El País'

Telegraphically, as the background could fill the space of three Stop the presses: Alfaguara, Prisa's publishing house, publishes a book by Daniel Verdú, a journalist from El País, about the mysterious deceased editor of the magazine Jot Down, who operated under a pseudonym and electronically due to the agoraphobia she suffered from. It is said that she managed to get the best male signatures by sending suggestive photos of her stunning hairdresser and thus saved herself from paying for collaborations at market price. If the reader is still wading through X, they will have seen that this social network has been colonized for weeks by this serial – of a chicken run – with mutual accusations between one and another.

In any case, Mar de Marchis (or María Jesús Marhuenda, her real name) died a few years ago and can no longer defend herself. But the magazine has decided to do so on her behalf and has launched a unique initiative. Taking advantage of the fact that Javier Cercas has written a history of El País that has been criticized for being a hagiography, they propose to write a collective book that narrates everything that the anatomist of instants has forgotten or wanted to leave out of his account. They only ask for stories with primary sources and, to dispel malicious rumors, they pay 300 euros for each text between 2,000 and 3,000 words, which is more than an acceptable price, given the market. They say there is no revenge and that they admire the newspaper – in the end, we are talking about the umpteenth fratricidal struggle between the Spanish progressives – but I have already ordered a 3XL bucket of popcorn. It all has a lot of drawing-room drama and Madrid incest, but in the fight between a giant media group controlled by investment funds and a small independent cooperative magazine, even if it is a bit too pleased with itself, I have my prior sympathies clear.