Editor’s note: In an ongoing series, INMA is profiling our most engaged members — our super fans. Today we profile Tomás García Morán, chief digital officer for La Voz De Galicia in A Coruña, Spain.

Tomás García Morán believes the past few years have shown us the power of journalism: “Good journalism improves people’s lives and makes our communities better places. We have better democracies if we have journalists,” said the chief digital officer for La Voz De Galicia in A Coruña, Spain. “This is something we imagined, but now, with the pandemic and the Russian attack on Ukraine, we have seen it ourselves.”

Morán views the business of journalism as being even more demanding than football: “No matter the victory last night, this morning there is an additional newspaper work to do. This is hard, but on the other hand, defeats are also short lived.” 

INMA recently caught up with him to learn more about what is on his mind.

INMA: What big lesson have you learned over the past couple of years that helped shape your plans moving forward?

Morán: The main learning is that you have to move continuously. In this changing ecosystem of the news industry, stopping means going back.

INMA: If you had your career to do over again, what would you want to know in the beginning?

Morán: Knowing something in advance would have been irrelevant because I probably would have done the same thing. Human beings only learn from their own experience. And it is wonderful that it is so; making mistakes and learning from them is one of the best parts of this job.

INMA: What makes you excited to get out of bed in the morning?

Morán: Work with my team. Every day is a different adventure. And with such a good team, so experienced, and with such a positive attitude, it is a pleasure to come to work.

INMA: What is the craziest job or project you’ve ever done in media — and what did you learn from it?

Morán: The launch of our first native app on iOS. I had no experience, neither in my current position nor in a project of this magnitude. We did it with an external professional, and everything went wrong at the beginning. The risk of missing deadlines was so high that I ended up at the developer’s house, with his wife and newborn baby, in the middle of the night, sitting next to his desk so he wouldn’t scatter. In the end, as it usually happens, everything came out pretty OK and on time.

INMA: What success within your company are you most proud of right now?

Morán: Helping place La Voz de Galicia at a level of dialogue with Google, Facebook, etc. similar to the one that newspapers in Madrid and Barcelona had.

We are the third best-selling newspaper in Spain, but we are 600 kilometres from the big decision centres in Madrid, and sometimes it is difficult to break down certain walls.

Additionally, helping organise workflows so that in just 10 days more than 200 journalists could work remotely, at the most difficult time in our history. All this without the quality of the newspaper suffering; quite the opposite!

INMA: What do you do to relax?

Morán: If I am physically or mentally tired, a cocktail [while watching] TV series, movies, and golf. If the need to relax is caused by a problem that I haven’t solved yet, the only way I know is to fix it. Or at least try and, if I can’t, move on.

INMA: If you hadn’t gone into news media, what was your backup plan?

Morán: There was no plan B, haha.

INMA: What is your favourite thing to read?

Morán: Content that teaches me something I didn’t know. It doesn’t matter if it’s in newspapers, newsletters, books, etc. And if we talk about literature, Hispanic-American literature: Luis Sepúlveda, Mario Benedetti, Manuel Rivas, Julio Llamazares, and lately, Pedro Mairal, and Gabriela Consuegra. 

INMA: What do you find the most challenging/interesting about the news media industry right now?

Morán: For the first time in history, we are obliged to attend to our readers, put them at the center, investigate their preferences, and listen to their feedback.

We have lost the monopoly on information distribution, and that forces us to think much more about our readers than about other actors. Until now, when writing, we used to think about our sources, our advertisers, our mothers, and even our bosses. And now finally our readers.

Reader revenue prevents this from ever happening again. Now we have to adopt methodologies from other industries that have many years of advantages in selling their products online. It is the biggest challenge in my almost 25 years of profession.

It’s a little dizzying, but it’s exciting.

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