My experience has been really interesting so far. I had the chance to work with a small organization, which means more humans relations. The host is working in a complex environment from one of the poorest region of Europe, and must improve innovation day by day. I learned how to identify financement opportunities for a small newsroom but also how to find new journalists to work with. Even if my exchange is quite to the end now, i think that we could focus more on the workflow organisation in the second part of our exchange.
On month 1 we worked on the implementation of the annual festival of Bizzolo media.
On month 2 & 3 we tried to develop partnerships through the results of the festival in terms of attendance.
On month 4 we planned to develop new financial opportunities for the media through call for projects and grants. We also had the opportunity to meet European institutions at the European Parliament in Bruxelles.
On month 5 we planned to develop new media opportunities by creating new formats to host extern collaborators and journalists.
On month 6 we’ll try to work on the perennial of such a small newsroom in a peripheral area and a media desert, such as conceptualized by different grants.
Developping a media company, with a non profit organisation, in a poor region is not easy at all. The importance of the Calabrian diaspora in Europe has been an opportunity to develop an external audience, not resident in the city. It is also a limit for the development of the media, but the leaders have clear opinions and an important network to count on. We developed a social media strategy aimed to the development of the sales for northern Italy and abroad. The presence of the leaders of the project is also necessary for specific events of presentation to foster the sales and the viability of the project.
It sounds a bit difficult to replicate the model of Bizzolo outside for many reasons, but it remains interesting to understand how to develop a strategy for a media in a desert mediator landscape.
