The Sironi Method
What is journalism today? In my opinion, Italian journalism has lost sight of its role as a public utility service, becoming a mercenary service for the highest bidder: marketta or business communication or brand journalism (which is not necessarily negative, but we should seriously reflect on how much it is journalism and how much advertising communication which are different things). In fact, there is more and more contamination between information and marketing tools, also because by now the most popular channels on which news travel are managed according to marketing logic. The currency is that of attention. Journalism is therefore often reduced to a mercenary service in the service no longer of people and not even of an audience, but of a target, i.e. a target to be hit. The public understood as citizens is transformed into users-consumers. Italian journalism today in its online form - provided that the distinction between offline and online still makes sense - is at the service of the algorithm and contributes to: feed fake news, communicate within non-communicating bubbles, create rather divisive opinions what comparisons and insights. Italian journalism today has allowed itself to be distorted and engulfed by social networks, essentially taking the worst of it. There are few and niche cases of good journalism that are precisely ‘cases’. Journalism is blaming the publishing crisis and therefore sustainability, but the responsibility lies not only with external factors. Even information is the victim of the most serious contemporary crisis, namely that of trust (and Covid was the moment of maximum unveiling at a global level). In Italy journalism is also the result of a caste and an endemic propensity to communicate in black vs white, right vs left... in short, in a dichotomous and oppositional way. A bit as if Don Camillo and Pep-
pone were enemies and lived in blinders, slaves of some master. A bit as if we were still on the barricades of ‘68, but without the same ideal drive. From a generational point of view, journalism is lived and used as an activism which, if on the one hand it indicates the need and expression of an ideal, on the other it does not emerge from the bipolar trap which generates ideological clash rather than confrontation, despite the continuous and rhetorical appeal to dialogue and inclusiveness. Who were your teachers, if any? My professional career has also been a training course, as I have learned not only by working in the field, but also thanks to meeting colleagues who have been masters. In particular, the first, Enzo Manes, twenty years older than me, left a mark. I was 25 and in addition to guiding me in the discovery of good writing (in particular how to choose the attack, i.e. the beginning of an article), he introduced me to ethics in the choice of news. Over time I then met many colleagues who have been masters in some aspects of my work such as Francesco Facchini who opened my eyes to mobile journalism and Fabio Ranfi, my age, who invited me to participate in the AllNews Milan adventure. The Italian journalist who for me is an undisputed master and a great inspiration above all for his free approach to information, even if unfortunately I have never had the good fortune to work with him, is Toni Capuozzo.
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