Argentine journalist Jorge Lanata, one of the most prominent news editors in the country, died on Monday at 64 at Buenos Aires’ Italian Hospital, where he had been admitted in June.

Founder of game-changing newspaper Página/12 in the 1980s, Lanata had been in hospital for almost seven months, during which he was treated for pneumonia and a wide-spread infection that had caused severe kidney and liver failure. 

Born Jorge Ernesto Lanata on September 12, 1960 in Mar del Plata, he experienced a challenging childhood, raised by his aunts and grandmother when his mother was left bedridden after a brain cancer operation. After a fight with his abusive father at the age of 11, he left home and spent time living on the street. It wasn’t until the age of 56, after his parents had passed away, that he found out that he was actually adopted, yet he chose not to delve into his origins.

He wrote for his high school newspaper and in 1974, at the age of 14, started working as a news cable editor for Radio Nacional. 

In May 1987, at the age of 27, he founded the centre-left newspaper Página/12, where he sat as editor-in-chief until 1994. Página/12 inaugurated a new, irreverent style of reporting, championing the fight for human rights and the demand for justice for the dictatorship’s crimes. The newspaper was also one of the harshest critics of Argentina’s 1990s neoliberal economic policies that would lead to the country’s social and economic meltdown in late 2001. In August 1990, he published the monthly magazine Página/30, which he edited until April 1995.

In 1998, he founded Veintiuno magazine, for which he brought together former editors of Página/12 such as Ernesto Tenembaum, Marcelo Zlotogwiazda and Martín Caparrós, among others. On its first anniversary, the magazine was renamed Veintidós, and on its second, Veintitrés, its current name. Lanata left his management position at the end of 2001 and, later that year, founded the magazine EGO. 

In 2008, he founded and directed the newspaper Crítica de la Argentina aiming to compete with Página/12 but with a clear anti-Kirchnerist editorial line. The newspaper experienced financial problems from its first year, and at the hands of Spanish businessman Antonio Mata went into bankruptcy in 2010, leaving more than 150 workers unemployed. The failure of Crítica affected Lanata’s image in the journalistic community.

Television was one of the pillars of his fame and popularity. He hosted the successful investigative news show Día D, which first aired in 1996 on America TV network, where he also hosted La Luna, Detrás de las noticias and ¡Por qué?. Día D won the Martin Fierro award for best news show two years in a row, in 1996 and 1997.

In 2012, Lanata joined mogul media conglomerate Clarín Group to host Periodismo para todos (PPT) on Channel 13. The prime time show was mostly focused on denouncing the administration led by Cristina Kirchner. The move earned Lanata considerable criticism, as he had consistently denounced the media group for corruption throughout the years. 

Radio also played an important role in his career, mostly during his later years. Lanata worked in several radio stations and programs after his early years at Radio Nacional. After the return of democracy he worked in Radio Belgrano, Rock & Pop, Radio Colonia and Radio del Plata. Most recently, he had been hosting Lanata sin Filtro on Radio Mitre. Incidentally, the show was on the air at the time of his death, and reported the news of his passing. 

Throughout his career, Lanata won 26 Martín Fierro awards for his radio and television work, including the Gold Martin Fierro. He also won Tato Awards, Clarín Awards, Éter Awards, Konex Awards, ACE Awards and Fund TV Awards. He was nominated for an Emmy for the investigation “The K Money Trail.”

A decades-long chain smoker, Lanata suffered from diabetes and coronary artery disease. Doctors diagnosed him with irreversible kidney problems in 2011, and he went through regular dialysis until 2015, when he underwent a kidney transplant. The healthy mother of a sick young man agreed to donate one of her kidneys to him, while the journalist’s wife Sara Stewart Brown donated one of her own kidneys to the woman’s son.

In 2019, Lanata was hospitalized five times due to gastroenteritis and other viruses he contracted afterwards, including conjunctivitis and influenza A. In 2021 he underwent a surgical procedure, and months later was diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmia and a thrombosis in his left leg. The following year, he received treatment for a “femoral nerve block” and also contracted Covid-19, which further complicated his respiratory problems.

By April of 2023, the journalist had already been hospitalized for respiratory problems. Between August and October of  that year, he experienced several complications, including a urinary tract infection. On September 12, his birthday, he went into intensive care due to a fever.

Lanata was admitted to the Italian Hospital in June of this year, after complications while undergoing routine tests. On Tuesday, September 10, the medical institution announced that the journalist had been transferred to a new health center, to receive rehabilitation treatment. Just a week later he had to return to the Italian Hospital due to an infection and pneumonia.

“Live all you can,” he said to the audience on his show after his hospitalization in 2023.

“Just imagine that everything is about to end, now. Try to live without regretting what you didn’t do, what you couldn’t do, what you left behind,” he added. 

“We think there is time, but there is no time.”

*With information from Ambito.com and C5N.com