Vicent Partal (; born 1960 in

Bétera Bétera () is a municipality in the ''comarca'' of Camp de Túria in the Valencian Community, Spain. With 23.647 inhabitants, it is the second most populous town in the Camp de Túria shire (INE 2018), in the second zone of the Valencia metropol ...

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...

) is a

Valencian Valencian () or Valencian language () is the official, historical and traditional name used in the Valencian Community (Spain), and unofficially in the Carche, El Carche comarca in Región de Murcia, Murcia (Spain), to refer to the Romance lan ...

journalist and director of VilaWeb. He has also worked in

El Temps ''El Temps'' (; 'The Times') is a weekly newsmagazine, published in Valencia by ''Edicions del País Valencià'' since 1984. It is distributed throughout the whole Països Catalans. It is edited by Eliseu Climent. The publication has offices ...

Diari de Barcelona The ''Diario de Barcelona'' (catalán: ''Diari de Barcelona'') (The Barcelona Journal) was a newspaper founded in 1792 in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. With a few interruptions it was published in paper form until 1994, and in digital form until ...

TVE TVE may stand for: Television * Televisión Española, a Spanish state-owned public-service television broadcaster ** TVE HD, a high-definition channel run by Televisión Española * Televisão Educativa, a defunct Brazilian TV network * TV Eduk ...

Catalunya Ràdio ''Catalunya Ràdio'' () is Catalonia's public radio network. With headquarters in Barcelona, it is part of the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (CCMA), owned by the Generalitat de Catalunya. Catalunya Ràdio broadcasts exclusively i ...

El Punt ''El Punt'' (, meaning in English "The Point") was a Catalan daily newspaper based in Girona, Catalonia (Spain). The newspaper was renamed in 1990 from the original ''Punt Diari'' ('Daily Point'). It was published between 24 February 1979 and 3 ...

, and

La Vanguardia ' (; , Spanish for "The Vanguard") is a Spanish daily newspaper, founded in 1881. It is printed in Spanish and, since 3 May 2011, also in Catalan (Spanish copy is automatically translated into Catalan). It has its headquarters in Barcelona and i ...

, among others. He is considered an

Internet pioneer Instead of having a single "inventor", the Internet was developed by many people over many years. The following are some Internet pioneers who contributed to its early and ongoing development. These include early theoretical foundations, specifyi ...

. In 1994, he created the self-styled "first news Internet system in

Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the no ...

" named ''El Temps Online''. In 1995, founded ''Partal, Maresma & Associats'', a company devoted to

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and access. From that initiative, ''La Infopista catalana'' appeared in 1996, which later became VilaWeb. He is currently the Chairman of the Board of the

European Journalism Centre The European Journalism Centre (EJC) is an independent, non-profit institute, based in Maastricht, Limburg, The Netherlands. Operations Its aim is to give further training to mid-career journalists and media professionals. The institute also ...

Biography

Vicent Partal studied

Magisterium The magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and larg ...

at the

University of Valencia The University of Valencia ( ca-valencia, Universitat de València ; also known as UV) is a public research university located in the city of Valencia, Spain. It is one of the oldest surviving universities in Spain, and the oldest in the Val ...

and worked at the Gavina School. However, he soon changed his profession and began to work as a journalist. Co-founder of the weekly magazine

in 1983, he was a collaborator of the

and

Televisión Española Televisión Española (acronym TVE, branded tve, "Spanish Television") is Spain's national state-owned public television broadcaster and the oldest regular television service in the country. It was also the first regular television service in ...

, where he specialized in international politics. As a reporter and correspondent, he covered events around the world, including the

collapse of the Berlin Wall The fall of the Berlin Wall (german: Mauerfall) on 9 November 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, was a pivotal event in world history which marked the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain and one of the series of ev ...

, the coup d'état in the USSR and the independence process of the

Baltic countries The Baltic states, et, Balti riigid or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term, which currently is used to group three countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, ...

, the

Balkan war The Balkan Wars refers to a series of two conflicts that took place in the Balkan States in 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War, the four Balkan States of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria declared war upon the Ottoman Empire and defea ...

, the revolt of Beijing students, the End of

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

in South Africa, the beginning of

Palestinian autonomy The Palestinian autonomy talks was an outgrowth of the Egypt–Israel peace treaty and were designed to lead to a resolution of the Palestinian nationalism in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. According to The Framework for Peace in the Middle East, on ...

, the conflict in

Kurdistan Kurdistan ( ku, کوردستان ,Kurdistan ; lit. "land of the Kurds") or Greater Kurdistan is a roughly defined geo-cultural territory in Western Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population and the Kurdish culture, languages ...

or several elections in the United States. In 1994 he created the first informative system on the Internet of the Catalan Areas, and from Spain called El Temps Online. In 1995, together with Assumpció Maresma, then director of El Temps's weekly magazine, he founded Infopista (first web directory in Catalan), which was later transformed into an electronic newspaper in Catalan, VilaWeb. In the same year he created with Jordi Vendrell the program ''L'Internauta'' in

. He is currently director of VilaWeb. He has collaborated with other media like Elpuntavui, El 9 Esportiu,

Berria ''Berria'' ( Basque: ''News'') is the only daily newspaper published wholly in the Basque language and which can be read in the entirety of the Basque country. It was created after the closure of the previous Basque language newspaper, Egunkaria, ...

or Catalunya Ràdio. He has published several monographs on

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

and the nationalisms of the former Soviet Union. He published the books ''Catalunya en l'estratègia militar d'Occident'' (1987), ''Els nacionalistes a l'URSS'' (1988), ''La revolta nacionalista a l'URSS'' (1991), ''Atles de l'Europa futura'' (1991), ''Catalunya 3.0'' (2001), ''11-M: El periodisme en crisi'' (2004, with Martxelo Otamendi) and ''Periodisme quàntic''. . In June 2009 he published ''Llibreta de Pequín'', the first commercial

ebook An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Al ...

in Catalan without print edition. He has also published two key books to understand the evolution of sovereignty in Catalonia, ''A un pam de la independència'' (2013) and ''Desclassificat 9-N'' (2015) As for television, he has written the series ''Hem fet el Sud,'' (''We made the South)'', and the show ''Una llengua que camina'', a co-production between VilaWeb and

Televisió de Catalunya Televisió de Catalunya (, known by the acronym TVC) is the public broadcasting network of Catalonia, one of the seventeen autonomous communities of Spain. It is part of the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals, a public corporation cr ...

on Escola Valenciana. He was also the scriptwriter of the controversial program ''Camaleon'' on Spanish public TV

, who made a criticism of news stories staging a false coup d'état in the Soviet Union. He is the president of the European Journalism Center, based in Maastricht, a professional organization of continental scope that works for the promotion of quality journalism in Europe and to assimilate the great technological and cultural changes that accompany the digitalisation of the media. Partal has won a number of awards, including Premi Ciutat de Barcelona 1999, Catalonia's National Internet Prize in 2000 and the National Journalism Prize in 2004.

Books

* ''Catalunya en l'estratègia militar d'Occident'' (1987) * ''Els nacionalistes a l'URSS'' (1988) * ''La revolta nacionalista a l'URSS'' (1991) * ''Atles de l'Europa futura'' (1991) * ''Converses sobre els orígens d'internet a Catalunya'' (2000) * ''Catalunya 3.0'' (2001) * ''11-M: El periodisme en crisi'', amb el periodista Martxelo Otamendi (2004) * ''Periodisme quàntic. Fent periodisme a Internet. L'experiència dels primers deu anys de VilaWeb'' (2007) * ''Llibreta de Pequín'' (2009) * ''A un pam de la independència'' (2013) * ''Desclassificat: 9-N'' (2015) * ''Nou homenatge a Catalunya'' (2018)

References

External links

Personal website

Sir Berners Lee and the African Journalist
Article at the EJC website about Partal ideas on journalism {{DEFAULTSORT:Partal, Vicent 1960 births Living people People from Camp de Túria Writers from the Valencian Community Catalan-language writers Journalists from Catalonia