Programme

The 2026/2027 workshop pays particular attention to the interview, the founding genre of journalism, which at once requires and develops the core skills of the profession: researching, framing questions, listening, verifying, selecting and editing. Each group's final assignment will therefore be an interview (or a series of interviews), in one of the three formats of contemporary journalism: written, video or audio.
Alongside an analysis of the essential elements of contemporary journalism, the syllabus explores in depth — taking the adopted book-length investigations as a starting point — the three themes on which the work of the 2026/2027 workshop is most specifically focused:
1) Remembering war: visible and invisible traces
2) Falling birth rates: a world with fewer and fewer children
3) Work in Italy: wages, job insecurity, rights
The books adopted are not a model to be reproduced, but an example of how a journalist can develop, research and tell the story of the subject they are dealing with. Journalists with experience in different branches of the profession will take part in the workshop.
Classes
1. Facts, news, news stories: an apparent synonymy (definitions, examples); newsworthiness; the construction of news
2. Speed and duration: hard, soft, breaking, slow
3. The multiplication of sources and the tools of verification; the rights and duties of journalists — with a focus on the ethics of the relationship with sources: consent, recording, quotation, sensitive cases
4. Investigative journalism and reportage — and the role the interview plays within them
5. The interview: types (profile, thematic, expert, multi-voice), preparation, drawing up an outline, the art of asking questions and of listening
6. Around and beyond the news: comment pieces and columns — compulsory mid-term exercise: each group presents its interview project
7. Forms and styles of written journalism: print and web — workshop: the written interview, from Q&A to the narrative profile; transcription, editing, headline writing
8. Journalism with images: photography, video, television, social media — workshop: the video interview; framing, lighting, editing, short and long formats
9. Journalism with the voice: podcasts, audio series, radio — workshop: the audio interview; recording, hosting, sound editing. Project clinic: review of the progress of group work
10. Collective analysis of the final group assignments: remembering war
11. Collective analysis of the final group assignments: falling birth rates
12. Collective analysis of the final group assignments: work in Italy

Core Documentation

Each group is required to read one book among the following titles - the one relating to the theme chosen for the final assignment.

1) Remembering war: visible and invisible traces
Gabriele Santoro, Nessun'altra casa. Memorie lungo la Drina trent'anni dopo Srebrenica (No Other Home. Memories along the Drina Thirty Years after Srebrenica), Del Vecchio Editore, 2025.

2) Falling birth rates: a world with fewer and fewer children
Ramiro Baldacci, Viaggio nell'Italia che scompare. Alla ricerca di una nuova narrazione culturale (Journey through the Italy that is Disappearing. In Search of a New Cultural Narrative), Edizioni Lavoro, 2026.

3) Work in Italy: wages, job insecurity, rights
Charlotte Matteini, Gli italiani non hanno più voglia di lavorare (e hanno ragione) (Italians Don't Want to Work Any More — and They Are Right), Cairo, 2025.

Reference Bibliography

Claudio Giunta, Come non scrivere (How Not to Write), Utet, 2018. Maria Teresa Carbone, Il lavoro culturale. Domande e risposte, Arcadia Edizioni, 2026 — in particular, for those interested in careers in communication, the interviews with Paolo Di Stefano (Corriere della Sera), Giulia Cogoli (Dialoghi di Pistoia) and Paola Nobile (Agenzia Delos).

Attendance

Students organise themselves into working groups. There are no rigid rules, but each group should have no fewer than four and no more than eight members. Since assessment is continuous, all students, whether attending or not, are required to join a working group and to take part in the group exercises set out in the syllabus, including the mid-term presentation of the interview project. Without this, the final pass (idoneità) cannot be awarded. Within each group, the roles taken on by individual members — research and background work, contact with the source, conducting the interview, filming or recording, cutting, editing and revision — are to be agreed from the outset and stated when the final assignment is submitted.

Type of evaluation

The pass (idoneità) is assessed on a continuous basis: assessment takes place during the course, on the basis of the group exercises and of the final assignment, which is also produced in groups. For this reason there is no written or oral examination at the end of the workshop. Exercises and final assignments will be assessed on the basis of: • the quality and range of the background research; • the relevance and construction of the questions; • the verification of sources; • cutting and editing; • formal care: the presence of a headline, the absence of typos, sound copy-editing; • compliance with the required formats and deadlines. Assessment is carried out on a group basis; within each group, the roles performed by individual members must be stated. Students must nevertheless register for an examination session in order for the pass to be formally recorded.