Jorge Lanata

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.

• Name — Jorge Lanata • Born — 12 September 1960 • Birthplace — Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina • Died — 30 December 2024 • Place of death — Campanario Jardín de Paz cemetery, in Florencio Varela, Argentina • Occupation — * Journalist • author • Years Active — 1974–2024 • Known for — Reporting on the K-Money political scandal • Partner — Andrea Rodríguez (1986–1989) • Children — 2

• Illustration — 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. The newspaper outed a request for bribes from the government of Carlos Menem to the Swift company, starting the Swiftgate scandal. Following a cocaine trafficking investigation started in Spain, the newspaper started the Yomagate scandal as well. In 1990 he founded the magazine Página 30, and in 1998 the magazine Veintiuno. He also hosted two radio programs, Hora 25 and Rompecabezas. He also founded the newspaper Crítica de la Argentina in 2008, but it fell into bankruptcy a pair of months later. Working at the Perfil newspaper he reported the discovery by the police of a bag of money in the private bathroom of the minister Felisa Miceli. She was sentenced to prison in 2012 because of this. Lanata also worked on documentaries. He filmed Deuda, a film about the external debt of Argentina, and Tan lejos, tan cerca: Malvinas, 25 años después, a film about the Falkland Islands on the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War. Día D and Detrás de las Noticias, his first TV program, started in 1997, both on América TV. He returned to television with the TV program Después de Todo, aired by Canal 26 from 2009 to 2011. He moved to the Clarín Group in 2012, and wrote editorial pieces for the Clarín newspaper. He hosted the radio program Lanata sin filtro on Radio Mitre; the testimony of Laura Muñoz in the program started the Ciccone case that investigated if vicepresident Amado Boudou had used strawmen to save the printing house Ciccone Calcográfica from bankruptcy. He started the TV program Periodismo para todos. One of the investigations of the program, the K money trail, revealed a scheme of money laundering that led to the sentencing of Lázaro and Martín Báez. The program won several awards, and during the 2013 edition of the Martín Fierro Awards he coined the term "la grieta" ("the chasm") to describe the political polarization in Argentina, a term that became mainstream since then. He started the unsuccessful TV program El argentino más inteligente in 2015, and won the Golden Martín Fierro Award on that year. Because of his ongoing health problems Periodismo para todos had no 2019 season, and he reduced his participation in Lanata sin Filtro to that of a columnist. The program returned in 2020, and had its last season in 2023.

Angélica, the foster mother of Jorge Lanata, was bedridden and unable to talk during most of his infancy. As a result, he was raised by his aunts. His first long-term partner was Patricia Orlando, whom he met in 1984 on his radio program "Sin Anestesia". He left her two years later for Andrea Rodríguez, whom he also knew from his radio work. Lanata and Rodríguez had their first daughter, Bárbara, in 1989. He left Rodríguez that same year, although he had a cordial relationship with his daughter. He married the journalist Silvina Chediek in 1990 in New York and got divorced a year later. The reasons for this were never disclosed. 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. Elba Marcovecchio was his last wife. Unlike his previous relationships, Lanata had no problem talking about their romance in celebrity magazines. They were married by the priest Guillermo Marcó, who used to be the spokesman for Jorge Bergoglio, later known as Pope Francis. They lived in individual apartments in the same building, and Lanata developed a close relationship with Marcovecchio's two kids. When Lanata was hospitalized, Marcovecchio had public disputes with Lanata's daughters, who accused her of abusing his credit cards and stealing from his private office. They also had disagreements over who could take decisions about his health while he was in a coma. Those conflicts ended in mediation with judge Lucila Inés Córdoba.

• Illustration — Jorge Lanata was interned and died at the Hospital Italiano. Jorge Lanata suffered from several health problems. His medic Julio Bruetman explained them in the biography Lanata. As he had deep sleep apneas he required breathing devices during the night. He also had a kidney failure, being hospitalized several times, and had to undergo kidney dialysis. He also had type 2 diabetes as a result of his overweight. In 1999 he had a weight near 150 kg, and got near to a diabetic coma. He was also a frequent smoker and never left the habit despite medic orders, even smoking on live television. He also consumed 8 grams of cocaine during a decade, until he underwent a detox treatment in the United States. 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.