Elena Inversetti The Art of Journalism

by Roberto Sironi

Who is Elena Inversetti?

I am a mother of two teenagers and I am a woman who asks herself many questions and who has the opportunity to ask others many questions for work. So I would say that I am very curious about the motivations behind things and people, as well as being driven by the need to do something useful for the benefit of the society that my children live in. For this reason I am a copywriter between journalism, social communication and authorship. So I write, even if less than I would like, and I try to find the time to read as much as possible and to go into depth: an act of thought that generates questions, in a circle, hopefully virtuous, of questions and insights. That’s why I’m never alone. Questions imply a relationship. Basically I found myself to be a person who naturally loves to connect with others and who in turn generates positive relationships.

What is journalism for you?

Journalism is a public service that is supposed to intercept real news and turn it into useful information for people. In this way journalism would fulfill its first function: that of becoming a civic intermediary between the various components of society. Secondly, journalism is a tool for in-depth analysis, because it always starts from questions and is therefore an instrument of knowledge, as close as possible to reality. To fulfill this task, therefore, journalism should necessarily, first of all, be humble, so as to be able to really listen, avoiding as much as possible (doing it completely is humanly impossible) prejudices and a priori convictions; in fact, humility generates awareness of fallibility and therefore allows you to correct yourself, to declare when you have not managed to give complete information. If we are humble, we are never too sure, which does not mean living in doubt or fueling the doubts of others, rather encouraging questions. Doubt is skepticism, it creates instability and undermines trust. The question, on the other hand, even when it doesn’t find it, knows that there is an answer and therefore always presupposes a comparison. Consequently, journalism is relationship.

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-