Journalists Talk About the Hot Topics in the News

Last night we drove out of the center of Bologna to the sprawling offices of a local newspaper chain called QN, where they publish many tabloid newspapers that serve different cities in Italy. Our hosts ushered us into an opulent executive board room, where we saw all of the newspapers and books that are printed here. I asked Stefania Dal Rio and Pierluigi Masini about the issues that concern their readers the most.

Pierluigi paused and answered slowly in English. He told us that on October 14, eighteen of the left wing parties here will try to coalesce into one. This is a big step, trying to assemble this diverse group into one unified party.But the issue that grips most people here is crime, and safety in the streets. Immigration has severely affected Italy, he said. North Africans, Albanians and other Eastern Europeans have descended on the region bringing a different way of life–and more street crime.

“There are ten nations represented in my kid’s school,” he said. “They bring their way of life and their cultures here, and there are problems. “Twenty years ago, we would leave our keys in the door in Bologna, today never. This used to be the safest city but that is not true any more,” said Stefania.

The mayor in Bologna is an up and comer who is making quite a splash. He is Sergio Cofferati, a former trade union boss who is bringing the issue of safety up day after day. “He is the first leftist politician to do this, and people are taking notice,” they told us.

I asked them about whether their papers have seen the declines in ads and readers that we see in the US. He said that the readership remains strong, but is not growing. The competition is fierce–there are four free daily papers, and nine papers in all covering Bologna. They publish many different tabloids and all use the same outer section but inside ‘the heart of the paper’ is a local news section about a particular city. We toured the newsroom and met the managing editor, who showed us photos that would be in the next day’s paper: they were of terrible graffiti vandalism that has desecrated local churches and a museum.

The papers here don’t print as many stories about gossip or Hollywood, they focus more on issues and politics. I asked them about Italian TV. “It is unwatchable, there is nothing, no content” said Stefania. One of the journalists commented that the papers here are serious, while the TV programs are full of fluff and scantily clad women. Bologna is a political city, people like to read about the issues. The papers are serious but the TV programs are not.