Associazione di Promozione Sociale
iscritta al RUNTS con n° di repertorio 91330
Last March, I organised two events in Milan and Rome entitled “From good news to constructive journalism”, to which I invited a small group of friends, colleagues and acquaintances: they have all known me for a long time and have witnessed the resolution (or better, the stubbornness) with which I’ve constantly pursued my goal in spite of the highs and lows.
Today, our Association gathers a new team of people, who are trying (once again) to introduce a change into the world (the world of news.) This project may sound utopian but will surely bring along some positive effects. Actually, it has already brought along some, now I’ll tell you why.
Since 2001 I have been analysing the impact that news has on our mood, on people as well as on the whole society. However, at the time, I hadn’t recognised the urgency of that need yet. Initially, the project was more basic and relied only on two words, but with great potential and a possible solution: good news!
This is what the people around me and I strongly needed: in that specific moment (the Twin Towers had just collapsed), everybody talked about terrorism. This is how it all began: a strong need led to the creation of a simple project – maybe naive or even trivial – which later evolved until our present time. However, I don’t want to focus on my personal story (I will tell it later on), but rather on the evolution from “good news” to “constructive journalism” as well as the positive effects.
The initial purpose was to solve an apparently simple problem: talking about those topics neglected by the mass media, or reporting events in a different way. We had no team of journalists. We were just readers who wanted to meet their needs by creating something that didn’t exist yet: a newspaper telling good news. We never talked about “kittens saved by firemen” or minor news, but wanted to show that constructive information was possible.
Then, after the establishment of BuoneNotizie.net (in 2001), three years later I founded the Associazione Buone Notizie (Good News Association) together with some friends of mine. As specified in Article 2 of the Association by-laws, we aimed at …
…offering an information service free of any useless and harmful scaremongering, presenting events from a different point of view;
promoting proactive and constructive debates and discussions on the events that happen in Italy and in the world…
Our reflections have been successfully followed up: the original project, in fact, has been adopted by RAI3 (with the “Good News” section of Report), Radio24 (with the “Si Può Fare” format) as well as by the Corriere della Sera newspaper (with the ‘Good News’ reportage). Meanwhile, we have gone further: we didn’t settle for the positive aspects of an event or for the stories of the “heroes of the day” with their extraordinary courage or solidarity. We took one step forward.
In 2018, the Associazione Buone Notizie turned into the Italian Association of Constructive Journalism: with the same spirit, albeit with a new team, we want to pursue our goal: helping the world of information regain its genuine and useful role for citizens and democracy, without any false or pretentious titles just to increase the sales.
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Co-Founder and President. Pioneer in Italy for a more constructive approach to the news, he is the publisher since 2001 of the news website BuoneNotizie.it (a sort of initiation to move the focus on the half glass full) awarded by Apple, the Presidency of Italian Republic, IlSole24ORE and several universities.
Italiano