I am a former journalist and I want to develop my own magazine, as a print one with a focus on a specific cultural or linguistic area, in my specific case Italy.
When I met Tiziana Barillà in Brussel’s it became clear that EYE was an incredible opportunity to learn from different experiences especially in the media and cultural field. The experience of Bizzolo’ fanzine in Reggio Calabria, my host enterprise, gives me the occasion to better understand the issues that have to face a young start up. Despite our national markets are different, we can identify similar business issues but also the singularity of the work : an artisanal way of doing in a digital word. Paper is not so evident nowadays, and at the time when journalists can be substituted by Artificial Intelligence it seams utopic to develop such an idea.
I am learning a lot every day by doing and this is definitely the best way to understand how to launch a business as a young entrepreneur. I am learning from a different perspective what does it mean to convince people to buy information, to buy a singular tool, to buy the work of a photo-reporter and how to search an audience and convince people that they’re defending freedom and democracy by doing so, and not only paying a monthly salary to a unknown person. Bizzolo’ is a singular experience of media entrepreneurship in Southern Italy, they are able to develop a unique fanzine made by a reporter and a photo reporter, but also a journalistic festival in one of the poorest cities of Italy in the periphery of cultural national institutions. It is not a surprise if Roberto Saviano himself is one of the main supporters of their activity. I hope to be useful to the team, despite this is not a rich and stabilized reality, during my permanence here, and bring a maximum of new skills back home.
I had the opportunity to meet the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs program during my first professional experience some years ago and keeped this opportunity in mind until now or more precisely until I met my new host entrepreneur in a professional meeting in Brussels. We were both italian speakers, with southern italy roots and discussed about our passion for journalism and printed magazine. This is how I finally found my host entrepreneur who convinced me of this opportunity. This is both the ambition to stay more time in Italy by my own and the acquaintance of someone who already knew the program that pushed me to this experience.