It’s been almost one week since I started attending the journalism course and tomorrow I’ll have the second lesson.

I was expecting a large group, but it turned out there are only two of us. Despite this, I found the course really interesting.

The teacher is a  journalist, who collaborates with different local newspapers and tv news.

The first lesson was about the general concept of journalism, who it addresses and what its purpose is. What especially stroke me was the emphasis on the fact that the most important thing is not providing information, but actually indulging the advertisers. From that concept emerged a very disenchanted view of the Italian press, which appears to be extremely influenced by politics and private interests.

All this is understandable and can be agreed with, although I was expecting a stronger focus on contents and techniques, rather than on the moral aspect of it all. But I imagine that is what we are going to do in the following lessons.

We then talked about sources (especially institutions like police, firefighters, etc.) and he gave us a little exercise for homework. During this week, in fact, we were supposed to look at what is happening around us and try to see if something can become ‘news’. I do have a couple of ideas, so tomorrow I’ll see what he thinks about them.

In our second lesson, we are going to talk about interviews and I look forward to hearing what he has to say about it.

Stay tuned for Episode 2, then!