Tomás Linn

Tomás Linn was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, the 16th November 1950. He is married, and has a daughter that also works as a reporter. Has been a journalist for the last 30 years and since 1989 is one of the two senior columnists of Búsqueda, perhaps the most influential weekly newsmagazine of Uruguay.

He teaches at the Universidad Católica del Uruguay since 1989 and presently is Coordinator of all Journalism courses and of the Program for Investigation and Research on Journalistic Issues, at the University.

He has published two books on journalism and are usually required reading for students of journalism. "De Buena Fuente" (1989) is about political journalism and "Pasión, Rigor y Libertad", published in 2000, deals with issues related to journalistic praxis. He has a third book (Los Temas sobre la Mesa, 1994) on Uruguayan politics. He obtained a degree at the School of Journalism in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1970-1973) and a degree in Communication at the Universidad Católica del Uruguay (1998). In 1995-1996 he was a Humphrey Fellow at the University of Maryland (College Park) where he took courses in Journalism and Politics.

He started working in Montevideo's "El Diario" (1974 to 1982) and was Managing Editor of two newsweeklies (both of them opposed to the ruling military regime in the early 80's). He briefly worked in radio and TV as well as in Reuters Agency.

He has also covered foreign events such as the guerrilla takeover of an embassy in Bogotá in 1980, where several ambassadors were held as hostages and the US presidential election of 1980, in Washington, DC, and New York. In may 1991, "Búsqueda" sent him to Moscow for a full month. He wrote a series of stories analyzing the delicate situation of the USSR, months before its final colapse.