This study breaks new ground in García Márquez studies by focusing on the author's journalistic writings between 1948 and 1955. By using a combination of modern critical methods, including narratology, dialogism and transtextuality, this study shows how García Márquez' early journalism laid the foundations for his later fiction writing. This work provides an exhaustive, coherent and comprehensive analysis of a neglected area of the Colombian author's writing. This study shows that García Márquez is a bigeneric writer, a journalist-fiction writer, who constantly combines genres in his writing. This study opens new critical channels for the study of his fiction by establishing its solid link with his journalism.