When someone asks me what it means to be a reporter, I think of Lodovico Poletto, who called me on the phone at a quarter to one on the night of August 30th to 31st this year that a train had just arrived in Brandizzo . killed five workers on the street: “I get there, I’m sitting in the car with a friend.” I can write 50 lines in no time, I’ll send them to you on WhatsApp. Can we reopen the newspaper? ».
Or I think of Flavio Corazza, the former deputy editor of this newspaper, who threw me out of bed in my holiday hotel in Palermo at 8 a.m. on Sunday, November 4, 2018: “During the night there was a flood with nine deaths in Casteldaccia. You’re already in these areas, would you like to go there yourself? Upon closer inspection, my wife and I had planned the evening before to spend the last of the three days in Palermo at Mondello. But I don’t say to Corazza: “I’ll get organized and leave.” I’ll send you 90 lines in the late afternoon before I take the plane. And I’m on my way.
It’s difficult to explain a passion for news, especially crime news, to someone who doesn’t do this job. “Black is speed, strong nerves and patience,” Giampiero Paviolo once wrote. They are dealing with people’s suffering, with their tiredness, with their more than justified desire to be left alone.
You have to chase people who don’t want to talk to you, bombard the prosecutor on duty with phone calls, stand in front of a police station for hours, get kicked out of a hospital you have no right to enter. As if that weren’t enough, you also have to be wary of competing newspapers: a better or simply happier journalist might have news you missed. And the next day there is pain.
When I was on the news, I saw Meo Ponte every day republic, someone who has a feel for news like no other. We were opponents on the field and friends off the field, spending days trying to outsmart each other.
He himself caused me the greatest grief. Both were sent to Santa Margherita Ligure to free little Patrizia Tacchella. The following day, news came out that the kidnapper gang was suspected of kidnapping three other children in Turin many years earlier. To this day I wonder how he knew that. On the other hand, I remember as if it were yesterday the day I published on the front page the arrest of Stefano Iegani, a banker of the then CRT, who was responsible for a film-worthy theft in the Cascine branch where he worked. Vica was responsible. Meo had no management. He called me very early the next morning: “It’s going to be a bad day…”.
The truth is that reporting is hard work and only those who have done it can know it. Today, ask Irene Famà, news reporter from Turin, and Monica Serra, news reporter from Milan, two of Italy’s best black writers, for confirmation. But every time it’s a different feeling. In his The ProvincialGiorgio Bocca recognizes this at a certain point: “I have no nostalgia for the political or economic journalism of those years, it was worse than now, but for the news yes, for that profession between reporter and policeman that telecommunications killed or. ” lazy.”
Being in the news is not like being in the newsroom: “Great events – wrote Giorgio Calcagno in his The story hour by hour – They came with short communiqués, flashes of five to six words, destined to turn into an avalanche in a few minutes. Nowadays, important events reach the newsroom via news channels or newspaper websites, but little has changed: they end up on the editor’s desk, however filtered by the fellow reporter who dictates these insertions on the spot or, as happens today, a short report sends articles for the Internet. For those who work in the newsroom, it is news muffled by distance, odorless despite its terrible burden of pain and fear.
Being a reporter has a physical, almost carnal relationship with the news. A fact occurs and must be reconstructed in all its aspects without judging or justifying. In one of his MaigretGeorges Simenon writes: “Facts are facts, and no argument can ever refute them.” Every time the reporter smells something even remotely reminiscent of a story, he feels something click within him. It could be a call from a lawyer friend: “If you come to court, this morning I will dismantle the statements of the witness who ruined my client: I bet the judge will have him arrested!” ». An informant’s catchphrase: “I have a bomb report in my hands…”. A neighbor’s banal report: “I came across a video on YouTube that was filmed at a party in the hills: you should watch it.” And you should hear how they talk…”
Every now and then I hear people say: It’s just news or, worse, gossip. The usual crushed dogs as they say in France, the usual crushed dogs. I say that news is life. And with this poor life there are those who managed to create literature. Do not you believe it? Go and re-read what he wrote courier Dino Buzzati on the tragedy of Albenga. Then we’ll talk about it again
