Jorge Ernesto Lanata (12 September 1960 – 30 December 2024) was an Argentine journalist and author. He founded the newspaper Página 12 in 1987, and worked on several TV programs, newspapers, magazines and documentaries. He moved to the Clarín Group in 2012, and hosted Lanata sin filtro on Radio Mitre and Periodismo para todos on El Trece. He won several awards, including the Golden Martín Fierro Award. He was hospitalized in 2024 with several health problems, and after some months he died on 30 December 2024.
Biography
thumb|left|upright|Jorge Lanata in 1996
Lanata was born in Mar del Plata. His grandfather was Agustín Lanata, a well known footballer of the early 20th century. He lived his first years at Sarandí, Buenos Aires. He started working at an early age, as a waiter and technician at Radio Nacional. He wrote an essay about the cinema of Argentina, which earned a municipal award.
He started his career in journalism in 1977, in the magazines Siete Días and El Porteño. He founded the newspaper Página 12 in 1987, aged 26. Following a cocaine trafficking investigation started in Spain, the newspaper started the Yomagate scandal as well.
His first successful book was the 2003 Argentinos, which was focused on the history of Argentina from colonization to the modern day. It was delivered in two parts, with the Argentina Centennial at the end of the first book. Lanata mentioned that he wrote it during the December 2001 riots in Argentina. It sold over 500,000 books, and was reissued in 2008 as a single book. In a similar style, he published ADN. El mapa genético de los defectos argentinos in 2004. Enciclopedia universal del verso is a collection of articles written for the magazine XXI. In 2007 he wrote a new novel, Muertos de amor, a historical novel set in the Dirty War, about a guerrilla fighting in the north of Argentina. Hora 25, from 2008, and 26 personas para salvar al mundo, from 2012, are collections of interviews.
After some years of being single, Lanata met Sara Stewart Brown on the studios of the Día D program. They married in secret in 2011 and had a daughter, Lola, the second daughter for Lanata. Brown donated a kidney in 2015 to a child and the child's mother did the same for Lanata, saving his life. They divorced in 2016, as Brown and Lanata had conflicts over Lanata's busy lifestyle.
Jorge Lanata entered the Hospital Italiano in June 2024. He was transferred to the Santa Catalina clinic on 11 September for neurological rehabilitation, but had to be returned less than a month later for kidney problems. He underwent surgery for intestinal ischemia on 9 October, which removed 70 centimeters of intestines. His health never got stable enough to be moved to the clinic, as his family desired. Marcovecchio told the press that in his last weeks he was serene and accepting of his upcoming death, and that there was nothing else the doctors could do about it. He died on 30 December 2024, as a result of multiple organ failure.
The funeral was held at the House of Culture of Buenos Aires, on 1 and 2 January. It was open to the public, and was attended by his family, Chano Moreno Charpentier (the singer of Tan Biónica), journalists Ernesto Tenembaum, María O'Donnell, Eduardo Feinmann, Nicolás Wiñazki, Nancy Pazos, Mercedes Ninci, Fernando Bravo, Joaquín Morales Solá, Nacho Otero, Diego Leuco, and Luis Majul, and producer Pablo Codevilla. Politician Patricia Bullrich sent a funeral wreath. Afterwards, he was buried at the Campanario Jardín de Paz cemetery, in Florencio Varela.
Several politicians sent their condolences after his death, such as Elisa Carrió, Carolina Píparo, Ramiro Marra, Fernando Iglesias, Patricia Bullrich, Maximiliano Ferraro, Marcela Pagano, Jorge Macri, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, Luis Petri and former president Mauricio Macri. The Radical Civic Union sent a message with its institutional X account. President Javier Milei made no public comments about his death at the moment, fearing that any comment from him would be turned into a political dispute.
Awards and nominations
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! Award !! Year !! Work !! Category !! Result !! Ref
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| Martín Fierro Awards || 1996 || Rompecabezas || Best radio journalist program || ||
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| Martín Fierro Awards || 1996 || Día D || Best TV journalist program || ||