"If you want journalism to have a future, you have to pay people for their work", said Manuel Jabois at the University of Navarra. The Galician journalist presented his latest book, Miss Mars, to more than a hundred students of the School of Communication with whom, in addition to talking about his work, he held a colloquium on writing and the future of journalism.

Manuel Jabois stressed that beyond economic independence, the core topic is in the precariousness. In his opinion, young people entering the profession are the future, and if you don't pay them now, they will dedicate themselves to something else: "Journalism is a vocation, yes, but it is also a profession. And if you don't get paid for it, you will become disenchanted".

It is a official document, he said, that needs to constantly renew its enthusiasm; so there are days, months or bad seasons, when you need to get paid for your work". Therefore, he concluded that "the better conditions there are, the better the future of the profession."

Regarding his book Miss Mars, the journalist recounted how he finished writing the work when the date of submission was approaching at publishing house. "I left it half written because I had the opportunity to go to Somalia with another reporter, Xavier Aldekoa; and when I landed back in Spain a health catastrophe awaited me due to the Covid pandemic, which as a journalist I had to write about". At the end of the summer he found that the deadline of submission was approaching. "I saw the dates and said to myself 'this has to be there', and as a journalist, when something has to be there, it is there".

In a friendly tone, Jabois ironically explained that he has a problem: "I really like to write. And it costs me a lot to start, but if I hit the first phase I get to the last one". He also stated that he does not read for pleasure, but "vampirizing, choosing what interests me. I read fifty or a hundred pages of many books because it is my official document, not for pleasure; for pleasure I watch movies, which last an hour and average, since I think we have a fragmented brain".