1. As a girl you dreamed of being…
I have no memory of planning a job when I was little, but I do remember that I played on the radio, reviewed it (the Anteojito) and when I was 12 I tried to write a biography of myself!
2. A childhood prank…
We used to go with some friends from the block to explore an abandoned building around the corner from my house. We had become credentialed researchers and intended to make great discoveries. Luckily, we never found anything.
3. In high school…
I never took a subject, I was quite good, especially in mathematics and accounting. But in history and geography he beat me with a machete. We had a great technique to copy; since the desks were made of wood, we took sandpaper and wrote the entire lesson.
4. To be an announcer you prepared yourself…
I entered the Iser in ’99 (it was the last century!) I remember that 400 entered and about three thousand applicants showed up. There was no way to prepare other than crossing your fingers. I was already a journalist and I took up broadcasting as a complement to get a job later.
5. You started on the radio…
December 24, 2002, I remember perfectly. A few days before the Iser reception party had been and I was extremely distressed because the course was ending and I hadn’t gotten a job yet. Just a few days later, Rivadavia radio called me to replace Christmas on the news; I was paralyzed with emotion. I was going to be part of the Air Rotary, I couldn’t believe it. I worked there for a while, I remember I was paid per week, in patacones! I wrote and announced news and it was there that I started as a mobile operator.
6. You came to TN…
I arrived at TN twice. First as an intern when I was studying journalism. I participated in an emblematic program from that time, El journalism que se. We won the contest so I spent three months in the newsroom, cutting cables, ordering coaxes and looking at everything with fascination. Several years passed when they called me to do a camera test and I ended up as a columnist in TN and Trece. Year 2006. And here I am still.
7. “It almost never lasts forever” is…
A literary attempt, a collage of scenes from life where love appears in different forms. Either it doesn’t appear, or we see it disappear. They are short stories that at one point I began to write non-stop, and without knowing that they would become a book. My first fiction book?
8. A news story that you would have liked to cover…
The Qatar World Cup.
9. A news story that you would have preferred not to cover…
I would tell you some tragedies, Cro-Mañón for example, or the femicide of Ángeles Rawson, because of the disaster and the sordidness in the face of horror. At the same time I feel that those and many other coverages that I was part of completely changed me, also as a professional, they questioned me. Of course I would have preferred them not to happen.
10. In your life Dalia Gutmann is…
Above all, a friend that I adore. She is one of those friends with whom you can talk about everything and who encourage you to always go for more. She is the person who has made me do the most ridiculous things in my life. She made me disguise myself in the street and asked people if they recognized me, something that did not happen even without disguising me and I with a poker face watching how people grabbed their hands doubting who I was. She took me to singing and dance classes. And the truth is that my inhibitory barriers are deactivated when I am with her.
11. Your biggest fear…
Losing the people I love.
12. Your most characteristic feature…
Stubbornness and confrontation. A very close friend described me like this: with Valeria you don’t talk, you argue.
13. You could never work with…
Someone authoritarian who does not accept my gaze.
14. Graphically, your work experience was…
Fleeting but beautiful. I did a column for a while in Para Ti magazine and collaborated in Sophía magazine but I did not experience the mystique of the newsrooms.
15. Of everything that makes you angry, what makes you most angry…
The injustice. Yes, I know that injustice makes us all angry. It hurts me internally, it makes me very helpless.
16. The difference between being a mother at 35 and at 47 is…
It’s always a flash. With Julián I had more energy for sure, Martina catches me in a very poised stage and there are things that I experience like a first time. But I’m completely fascinated by the relationship the brothers have. They play in a register that I don’t access and I love seeing them together.
17. With a baby and a teenage son, the frequency of making love…
What was that?
18. To cover notes on the street, are very hot days or very cold days worse?
I had a hard time with the cold. But doing mobile or guards that becomes much worse. Numb hands, chronic contracture from spending hours with our shoulders raised trying to make a bun and I didn’t have to take the bath. Imagine going to a gas station and on tiptoe taking out layers and layers of clothing and thermal shirts and medibachas until you can relieve your bladder. And let’s not even talk about the notes where the note itself is cold or heat. I don’t want either of them there.
19. A skill that few know about you…
I make good bites.
20. Between a year in jail or a year covering tourist exchange notes, you choose…
Hahaaaaaa. I learned after many replacements, a lot of tomato and meat prices, many weeks of ice cream, many Easter bagels and more to take advantage of those notes to my advantage. Taking the kilo of ice cream as a gift home or, when there was no prize, doing the proper catharsis in the air.
21. Your relationship with your cell phone…
A little toxic. We become people dependent on the device. I am aware of that and I rebel from time to time but after five minutes I am checking I don’t know what. Now with such a small baby I’m trying to stop when I start playing.
22. If some journalists were measured by their truthfulness instead of their credibility…
I do not believe in the single truth, I would prefer that we be measured by the honesty with which we work.
23. The current situation of public media…
I am a defender of everything public; In the case of the media, I think it is the way to guarantee access to content and information in a plural way. Both news agencies and television or radio, the latter where I had the opportunity to work and air stories that I would not have been able to get through in another medium due to lack of “clicks”.
24. That radio station would tell this host of Arriba Argentinos…
Don’t change the essence, stay restless, don’t hunker down at your desk. And enjoy it very much, you deserve it.
