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24 years guiding voices and telling stories… This is the story of an iconic pro...

24 years guiding voices and telling stories… This is the story of an iconic professor at our university

Since October 2001, Professor Giezzie Lasso Agredo has dedicated his life to training communicators at the University of Cauca, leaving a mark on generations of students passionate about radio. His career in the world of communication and journalism is a true testament to vocation and passion for sound and the spoken word. For this reason, within the framework of Journalist Day in Colombia and in connection with World Radio Day, we invite you to learn more about his story.

Every February 9, Colombia pays tribute to those who dedicate their lives to building society through the practice of journalism, a fundamental task that, in this academic home, has been cultivated by the Social Communication program for nearly 26 years. Impressive how time flies, right? Throughout all these years, the training of ethical, critical, and well-rounded professionals has been the Unicaucano purpose, and today many of them practice journalism with commitment and passion. In this context, it would be impossible not to acknowledge those who have accompanied this journey and, through dedication, have made history, such as Professor Giezzie Lasso, who for 24 years has left an indelible mark on the training of new generations of communicators; communicators who, like their mentor, breathe love for that magical medium through which stories can be shared, the revolutionary invention that also has its world day in February: we’re talking about radio!

Professor Giezzie’s interest in communication was born at home, among the sounds of the radio his mother used to listen to and the stories that captivated him from childhood. Over time, that curiosity turned into practice when he had the opportunity to participate in an unassigned-frequency radio station in his hometown of Pradera, Valle del Cauca. His passion for radio grew, and despite economic challenges and the resistance of his rural family, he managed to enter the Universidad del Valle, where courses such as Sociology, Anthropology, and Culture and City broadened his perspective and gave him new tools to understand and narrate the world. Truly inspiring!

When the talented Giezzie began his professional career, he faced a reality that many journalists have had to endure. “I was deeply struck when I worked at a newspaper in Cali after graduating from university. It was my first job as a journalist in written formats, because they paid me to write. It was a sensationalist newspaper, so one day I was very impacted when there were no deaths in Cali, and that day I resigned. The head of the newsroom came in and said: ‘We’re in crisis; there are no deaths, so what are we going to write?’ That day I said: ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’ and I resigned. It had to do with ethics, because one is not here to report deaths or to wait for someone to die in order to write. So, I understood: ‘This is not the place to be.’” With these words, our protagonist revealed his rejection of sensationalism and reaffirmed his commitment to responsible and ethical journalism.

In an emotional exercise of remembrance, this proud Unicaucano recalls that one of the most gratifying moments of his career, aside from university teaching, was the opportunity he had to coordinate a network of radio stations along the Pacific coast of Colombia, as part of a project supported by UNICEF and the CVC. “Something that really caught my attention was the ability of the inhabitants of the Pacific to dramatize. At the university, in training with students, it can take an entire semester to get them to produce a dramatized story; meanwhile, in the Pacific they do it in half an hour. They ask, ‘What’s the idea?’ They meet, they talk, and they talk with so much emotion, with joy, with passion. Sometimes you might think they’re arguing, but they’re actually working things out, and then they say: ‘Professor, it’s ready,’ and they start acting, and it’s wonderful,” recounts Professor Giezzie, evoking the richness of these communities’ oral traditions and their astonishing ability to bring stories to life.

Thus, thanks to his extensive experience in diverse contexts, Professor Giezzie encourages his students to experience sound in a completely different way, offering the following invitation: “Movies, more than watching them, should be listened to. So, practice listening to the soundtrack. Don’t let yourselves be carried away by the automatism of seeing the image synced with the audio; instead, make the effort to become aware of the sound, the audio layers, the sound planes placed in those images. If you do that, you will enjoy them much more.”

In the same way, the professor reflects on what comes after one’s time at the University and issues a call to students who aspire to practice journalism, inviting them to rethink this craft, since the profession is currently facing a stage of delegitimization and attacks. This makes it urgent to train professionals committed to ethics and truth. “There is a hegemony that seeks to impose itself from centers of power, so I would tell students that there are very interesting referents they should follow, that they should think beyond that imperial logic. We must resist through a journalism that tells us what is happening from the people’s perspective, and a journalism that offers hope, because nowadays we see an evasion of information. That is, almost everyone says: ‘I don’t want to know what’s happening in the world,’ and that is exactly what those higher spheres of power want, to have people remain indifferent to everything that happens. I can tell you that in Gaza more than 150 journalists have been intentionally killed, and that in the United States there is a different kind of war; it is not a war of bombs as such, but another kind of war where journalism is also annihilated, but in different ways. One way is, for example, cutting funding; another way is openly discrediting; another way is threatening. But all of them are ways of annihilating journalism,” Professor Giezzie states with concern regarding the current landscape.

As you can see, in this brief account we bring together two special dates, Journalist Day in Colombia and World Radio Day, to highlight from another perspective how, at the University of Cauca, we take pride in having professors like Giezzie Lasso. He has built a pedagogical approach grounded in learning through experimentation; a memorable professor whom surely hundreds and hundreds of students who have passed through his guidance remember fondly for his rigor and encouragement to pursue high-quality training. His commitment to sound-based storytelling and independent journalism has inspired generations of young people to explore new ways of telling stories, many of whom are now recognized professionals in different media outlets and organizations, both locally and nationally. His message for new generations of journalists is clear: stay informed, read, learn about the world, and never lose the capacity to be amazed by the power of sound and the spoken word. After 24 years in the classroom, Giezzie Lasso continues to shape storytellers with the same passion that led him, decades ago, to discover his vocation.