Tag Archives: Italy

Italian newspaper joins Times safer cycling campaign

The Times’s widely praised safer cycling campaign has been picked up by an Italian newspaper.

The Gazzetta dello Sport is taking part after one of its journalists, Pier Luigi Todisco, died while he was cycling to work last October.

The title is urging professional sportspeople to join the roll call, and for ordinary readers to support the campaign as well. A Twitter hashtag, #salvaciclisti is being used to spread the word.

According to the paper, 2,556 cyclists have died on Italian roads in the past ten years – double the number of bike deaths in the UK (1,275).

The Times launched its campaign earlier this month, three months after Times journalist Mary Bowers was knocked down by a lorry while cycling to work. She is still not conscious and remains in a trauma unit.

Some 33 MPs have signed an early day motion in parliament praising the cycling campaign.

Italian journalists call on government to improve freelance working conditions

Industry groups in Italy are calling on the country’s government and ministry of work to fix minimum standards for the treatment and pay of freelance journalists, according to the website of Liberta di Stampa Diritto all’Informazione (LSDI).

It is absolutely unacceptable that independent work is paid with compensation so low that the vast majority of freelance journalists declare an average annual income that is lower than the poverty threshold indicated by ISTAT [the Italian statistics institute].

LSDI has also written and published an ebook on the working conditions for journalists in Italy.

Reports in Italian by LSDI…

Summarised and translated by the Editors Weblog…

Online news on the rise in Italy

Online news is gaining popularity in Italy, according to a survey cited by the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper blog.

Research by the Mediawatch Journalistic Observatory suggests readers of online daily news outlets has risen to 39 per cent this year. In 2007 only 25 per cent of internet users read online news.

Trust in the information provided by online dailies has also increased from 18 percent to 45 percent in the last three years, the survey revealed. Overall, Italians are spending more time online and 59 percent said they are using social networks, way up from the 12 percent who used them back in 2007, Ansa revealed. Nonetheless, there is still opposition to buy online and only 21 percent trust digital payments.

NMA: Reactions to Italy’s ‘blog-killing’ new bill

Reputation Online’s Vikki Chowney rounds up the reaction to a so-called “blog-killing” clause in Italy’s new Wiretapping Bill.

As Journalism.co.uk reported last week, the revised bill will allow the publication of transcripts “relevant to an investigation”, but campaigners remain concerned by a clause in the new version which, according to European Digital Rights, requires anyone “responsible for information websites” to publish corrections within 48 hours of a complaint of inaccuracy being made, or else face fines of up to 25,000 euros.

There’s a huge amount of convergence within the reputation industry at the moment. the New York Times, FT and Guardian have all run lengthy features in the past two weeks on the issue of “managing your brand” as an individual. Just last week we saw a Facebook user sued for posting defamatory comments on a friend’s profile.

We’re yet to see a UK brand put a law like the one proposed in Italy into action, but as the courts start to impose stricter rules and the idea of managing personal reputation becomes more mainstream, these types of regulations will become more commonplace.

Full post on New Media Age at this link…

Q&A: XCITTA, Italy’s new local news network

A network of local, multimedia news sites has gone live in Italy. XCITTA’s sites, which currently cover 10 Italian cities including Rome and Milan, are supported by a team of full-time journalists and freelancers who are encouraged to work remotely and engage with their readers online and via social media sites.

Each city site follows the same template with a strong emphasis on visuals – there are plenty of images and video clips embedded, as well as the pictorial navigation bar – and the sites in the rest of the network are accessible via a navigation bar at the top of the homepage.

Journalism.co.uk put some questions about the new sites to director Fabio Amato:

What gave you the idea for XCITTA?
The idea first came from an Italian-American entrepreneur, who didn’t see why there couldn’t be a website in Italy where journalism, participation from users and local news stories couldn’t be joined together in a network between 10 cities.

In the US this model already exists with sites like Gothamist. Our challenge is to reproduce this system in Italy, where inhabitants are more dislocated and where urban areas are less populated than in America.

How do you think to make money and how are you funded?
Essentially, the main source of revenue will be advertising. Although we are a network of local information, ads will be placed by an agency at national level.

The owner of the group is Vincent Turco, who has had a career in advertising and consulting for companies. We also have two members from Metacomunicatori, an important advertising agency located in the north east of Italy.

What’s your mission?
The network is complex and new, but basically we have one rule above all others: to publish only news that has an impact on the city’s life.

We are against having a mission statement as we consider this a bad habit. In our daily work, our reporters work where and about what they are passionate about. There’s not a space named ‘editorial office’ but rather a channel – the internet – where we work and as such our team is not stationary, Each XCITTA journalist has three tools: a laptop, an iPhone and a video camera. With these tools he can be connected with the other journalists and with those that live in the town.

At the moment, we have 17 journalists and a variable number of freelancers. Our journalists are normally under 30-years-old.

What are your targets?
Our first objective is to get half a million users a month, which is definitely ambitious. We will then aspire to expand to 20 and then 30 cities, and, if our project works, maybe other European countries.

#WANIndia2009: Making money – ‘Our world is not only editorial, it feeds business’

Some interesting examples of how publishers are branching out into e-commerce were given at this morning’s opening session of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN)/World Editors Forum (WEF) conference by Iñaki Palacios and Francisco Amaral, directors of design firm Cases I Associats.

The pair advocated ‘monetising the channel not the content’ when it comes to charging online and looking at how e-commerce can be brought in.

Italian sports newspaper La Gazetta dello Sport, for example, has recently launched Gazzatown: an online shop that requires registration, which originally sold football goods but now has expanded to other sports products.

“Our world is not only editorial it feeds business,” said deputy editor, Gianni Valenti in a video clip in the presentation.

“Having a strong brand name gives a guarantee – it is the only way of overcoming fears that people have of buying online.”

Gazetta dello Sport website

Neatly illustrating his point, Valenti said adding a newly-signed football player’s shirt shortly after his transfer has been announced during the transfer window was particularly important, for example.

Elsewhere People.com‘s editorial team has produced videos featuring style tips and filled its online shop with related purchases – for example, highstreet clothing matching a celebrity’s outfit.

All coverage of #WANIndia2009 from Journalism.co.uk can be found at this link.

Carlo de Benedetti: press freedom, La Repubblica and Berlusconi

“The question of the truth and of accountability underpinning this issue, which has been round the world, has also become a question of freedom. The Prime Minister in attacking Repubblica is attacking the whole of the press of the western world,” said Carlo de Benedetti, chairman of Italian publishing group Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso, this week in the below speech, entitled ‘Newspapers and Democracy in the Internet Era. The Italian Case’, to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

De Benedetti was referring to the legal action brought against La Repubblica, which is published by L’Espresso, by Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

Berlusconi had refused to answer 10 questions posed by the paper to the leader regarding a series of alleged scandals. Berlusconi took legal action and claimed for damages against the paper prompting an online petition from the paper.

“On November 5, after six months of attacks and allegations, the Italian Premier finally had to answer the 10 questions posed by Repubblica. This decision shows that the questions were legitimate, that it was journalistically correct to ask them, reiterate them and demand an answer. The delay with which the answer arrived was definitely politically significant. Equally significant was the method chosen for the answers: rejecting a direct confrontation with Repubblica or a dialogue with public opinion, opting instead for a journalist friend and his book, published by the publishing house owned directly by the head of the government. A controlled and protected political operation,” explained de Benedetti in his speech reproduced below via Scribd, in which he also comments on the role of citizen journalists and online news sites.

freemedia.at: Over 300,000 at Italian press freedom protest

“A press freedom protest organised by the National Federation of the Italian Press, in the Italian capital Rome on Saturday, and which according to the organisers drew over 300,000 participants, was on the same day criticised by Italian public broadcaster Rai 1,” reports the International Press Institute.

Full story at this link…

Related:

This week Italy’s Constitutional Court has overturned a law granting prime minister Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution while in office.

Berlusconi’s lawyers have sued La Repubblica for allegedly defaming the prime minister by repeating its questions about his private life and political aspirations each day (Journalism.co.uk).

paidContent:UK: Italian Competition Authority searches Google’s Milan offices in newspaper dispute

According to several news reports the Italian Competition Authority searched Google’s Milan offices this morning as part of an investigation into the company’s abuse of its ‘dominant position on the internet’, says paidContent:UK.

The investigation was sparked by a complaint from the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers criticising the search giant’s lack of transparency in handling Google News – in particular the ranking process.

Full post at this link…

Google responds on its European Public Policy Blog stating that publishers can request to be removed from Google News at any time and that Google drives vast amounts of traffic to publishers’ websites.


BBC News: Italian media group suing Berlusconi for defamation

L’Espresso, the publisher of La Repubblica, Italy’s second largest newspaper, is suing the Italian prime minister and media owner, Silvio Berlusconi, the BBC reports. It said that Berlusconi had not yet responded to allegations.

“Mr Berlusconi described La Repubblica as ‘subversive’, prompting L’Espresso media group to sue for defamation.

“L’Espresso also publishes a magazine of the same name, and both publications have led recent investigations into Mr Berlusconi’s personal life.

“The group also said the PM had discouraged businesses from buying advertising space in its publications.

“According to a complaint lodged with a Milan court, the group’s lawyers have also accused Mr Berlusconi of abuse of office and of flouting market rules.”

Full story at this link…

(Via EJC)