TV News Anchor Jorge Traverso Dead at 80

Award-winning Uruguayan journalist and news anchor Jorge Traverso has died. He was 80.

Traverso, real name Schubert Jorge Pérez Denis, passed away Sunday from complications during heart surgery, his family told Telemundo. The famed journalist had reportedly suffered health issues in recent years and previously had stents placed in 2024, El País reported.

Traverso’s career spanned decades and media, including radio, television, and print, and he is well-remembered for his iconic phrase, “That’s the way the world is, friends.” He is perhaps best recognized for his years as a journalist and host of Channel 10’s Subrayado. Alongside Blanca Rodríguez, he presented the main newscast for over two decades from 1990 until he stepped back from the role in 2013.

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Outside of Subrayado, Traverso also hosted the program Hablemos, gaining recognition for his interviews with the likes of Luis Alberto Lacalle and his family to the late Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa. His final TV appearance was on Channel 5’s Periodistas: toda la verdad.

Traverso was also a well-known film critic and became the first Uruguayan journalist invited by the Academy to the Oscars, and also previously wrote for the newspaper El País.

Throughout his long career, Traverso received numerous accolades. In 2017, he became the first Uruguayan to win the Konex Mercosur Award for Communication and Journalism in the region. He also won the Iris Award five times.

Paying tribute to the TV legend on X, Periodistas – Toda la verdad said they were “deeply saddened. Working with him was a privilege due to his professionalism, experience, and humanity. He was generous, respectful, and a team player… We will miss him.”

“Jorge Traverso was a leading exponent of the best national journalism: information, ideas, culture,” fellow journalist Julio Ma Sanguinetti added. “Without sectarianism or sensationalist tensions. Personally, a friend we will miss.”

Somebody else who watched Traverso on TV over the decades added, “For our generation and the generations who had the pleasure of following him on the newscast every evening, his famous phrase “this is the way the world is” will always be remembered. May a distinguished journalist rest in peace.”

Traverso is survived by four children and two grandchildren.