As any good freelancer knows, it is a good habit to go and visit your editors personally whenever you have a chance to be in your home country. So I am just back from a tour of the newsrooms I work/have worked with in Milan, Italy, and the mood is rather gloomy. Empty seats and switched-off computers, dramatic cuts in working time, forced retirements, those who still cling on to their seats working desperately to achieve at least the same quality as before.

Even the editor in chief of…

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An update on the hunger strike initiated by Paola Caruso, journalist at Corriere della Sera.



Paola ended her protest today after 5 days without food. She received hundreds of messages of solidarity from the web, from colleagues who are in the same situation but also from senior editors in other media: Alessandro Gilioli, senior editor at l’Espresso, wrote that this episode, perhaps the first of its kind in Italy, is not a good sign, neither for journalism nor for Italy.… Continue

Paola Caruso, journalist at Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading daily, has started a hunger strike to protest against her precarious working contract. Paola has been working for 7 years at Corriere, always on 1 year "flexible" contracts, which give no right to social contribution, maternity leave, sickness or paid leave.

In theory these are contracts for free-lancers, and they should not be renewed year after year, but in practice they are used for those who work as staff journalists… Continue

The line between journalism and professional communication (public relations, marketing, advertising and such) is getting thinner. As institutions and multinationals invest more and more in efforts to improve their image, the media are getting weaker and weaker, as well as increasingly commercially-driven. Every day we hear of newspapers and newswires cutting on staff expenses, and if we look at Brussels, for example, the press corps has shrinked dramatically over the last few years.

Every… Continue