The Greatness and the Woe of Journalism

It says: mend

I know many of you are interested in journalism and communication tools. I started to cultivate this passion from high school, I didn't want to do anything but be a newspaperman, with the sheer despair of my father. He, as the good Director of a Liqueu, considered it very contemptuous.

But journalism has been the greatest trend of my life. I admit that even though I loved him and I still love this profession, I can't advise any young man to take this profession today, because I believe journalism is already in the end.

It has to turn completely, in a sense I don't know how to predict. I'm addicted to memories and I come from a certain school, and at this age I find it very difficult to think of something different. I hope for you to have room for a complete transformation, to consider the serious events that have occurred in time -- among which many are guilty of the crimes of journalists -- from the entry of new technologies, where all is a tradition collapse.

Classical journalism, which I cannot stop from, is impossible to adapt to.

When I started, 60 years ago, we had as a technological touch, a machine to write “Olivette Letter 22”, on which I continue to write. They don't do it anymore, so I was able to buy five pieces next to the old objects store, which I moved to different points. Beyond that I can't go. I don't know how to use it, a loved one, does it for me, otherwise I wouldn't even know how to put a sheet. We journalists have to account for a heartless enemy. And instead of fighting him, we're in his service: this is television. I have the same ideas as Popper, television is the biggest disaster that could happen to us, because it was used just to be. Newspapers have been turned into television megaphoons, so we face 8 or 9 columns on Pipo Baudon or Alba Pariet. Television could be a great instrument for culture, but it's not. That's his job. What's our business, is that we've become megafos, copying habits and recognizing superiority.

Italy, except that it has always mixed serious with futility, has always treated futility as the only serious thing. And there's nothing we do but adapt to the extreme by taking this degradation to our habits. But there's worse. Television teaches and paves the way for protagonism, which by joining journalism, has catastrophic effects. Television promotes the ugliest interest of bad journalists, the search for any price of fuss. If any of you would like to do this profession, save the lure from the buffalo, son! Remember that's a shortcut to the asses. You're allowed to move forward, but you're bad. The public is a strange animal, it looks like someone who understands a little but has memories, and if you play with his faith, you're lost. You need to earn that trust seriously and tiredly day after day. This does not save us from error, but it imposes upon us the obligation to denounce ourselves, when we understand our mistake, and to apologize to our readers.

If you want to do this job, remember well. It's a profession that requires a lot of modesty, and protagonism is an obstacle to this fundamental law.

I see the new directors today. They're very good, you know, they're about 40 and 50, they could be my kids. But they're not in the direction, they're in the eye, they're in marketing offices, because the core thing about a newspaper is called audience. And the audience brings an ad, because a newspaper shouldn't just live, but it also has to make money, especially if it wants to be independent. A newspaper to ask someone for money is his servant. I lost the La Voce newspaper because I couldn't get it into active balance. It's the audience in its worst forms that forces us to banalize even the newspaper, which to achieve print needs to describe this route. But this road doesn't lead anywhere. We have an increasingly bad journalist because he's always looking for audiences, more and more looking for an ad, enjoying the worst tastes of the public, instead of correcting them. To understand, the public is always our owner, we can't hit head-to-face, but we need to be educated. Well, let me guess, because there's nothing worse than smart behavior. I don't know in journalism is capable of fulfilling a evolution in that sense, but I don't see signs. If I had 40 years less, I'd still try to make a newspaper. Now someone may be amazed, but I would follow the open road from my old enemy Ferara with Il Foglio. That's what I'd like to do with La Voss, who didn't have the power and the opportunity to do. A newspaper that quickly matched its means to costs, with few pages, that could do without a lot of advertising, with little-paying journalists- yah.

But we're always paying a little bit, because this trade isn't about money. On the contrary, if you meet a wealthy journalist, do not believe him. Journalism does not lead to wealth, I can lead to prosperity, for the sake of truth. I don't complain, I have enough, even more to live well. But a rich journalist is a smelly journalist because he used his trade to achieve other goals. A journalist who enslaved the trade by apologizing to the Attorney I would shoot him.

As you can see, I'm not giving you good news, but at this point I have to tell you something else. Maybe I did a wrong trade, but I don't regret it. I believe journalism in Italy played a mission, it removed Italian culture from its fortress, from Mafia gangs. I apologize for returning your hospitality, but I must tell you that journalism has been doing this for decades, bringing culture to the public. Italian culture had a great need because she can't speak to the public. It has its own language, untranslated into the common language. You may know I don't have much to boast about in 1968 and what I did there because I still carry marks and tracks, but the distant reasons for those boys who threw a bunch of bullets on me, maybe if I was their age I would share them with them. I probably would have left because the way they wanted to do things was wrong, but something was. In rebellion in a noble way of understanding culture, something right, there is.

Any one of you would like to make this trade remember to choose his owner, the reader. To serve him and speak his language, not that of the academy. I lead the culture of the academy to meaning. Remember, this has been one of the most serious betrayals in Italy, and a lot of them have been committed. You want proof? Take a personal scripture from the Italy of 700éa and compare it with the pages of the French encyclopedia. The pages of Volter, D'Alembert, are clear and clear, all understood. In others, nothing is understood - a language worn, not real, a prince tongue. The language of culture in the service of God, which then turned into a party. So it got worse because it was better to serve a Duke or Cardinal than a party. She was less unworthy, even though she was unworthy. Remember, the culture in Italy never spread, the little that was done by journalism. If you want to do this job, that's the commitment you have to fulfill. To do that, there is no suffering that can turn your mind around, and this job is very nice. It's not going anywhere but it's beautiful. Journalism is for journalism and nothing else.

(This is the text of the recent lecture by the Indro Montanelli at Turin University on May 12, 1997)

Eagle: Brizida Gjikondi