Flowering Investigative Reporting in Italy’s News Deserts

With this fund, IrpiMedia will broaden investigative training and reporting with grassroot communities and local media outlets to promote equal access to quality information for historically underrepresented societal groups, such as youths, migrants and ethnic minorities who often live in the peripheries together. The project will do so by publishing at least four investigations coordinated with collectives and local newsrooms in news deserts in Italy: Calabria, Sicily, Sardinia and peripheries of two main cities; Rome and Milan. Moreover, we will organize two in-person journalism workshops for reporters, advocacy groups and relevant NGOs in areas where our primary audiences are disadvantaged, like those under the control of Italian mafias or those with heavy migrant work exploitation. One of these workshops will work specifically with young reporters (under 30) and students from Fondazione Basso Journalism School and/or Cattolica University’s Journalism School. Editorial productions will stem from these workshops and be published on IrpiMedia. With this project, we will also strengthen a bottom-up perspective by offering our whistleblowing platform IrpiLeaks in multiple languages with a specific channel for migrants who can flag injustices and share their stories. A pilot has been done with a project on gig economy couriers in Milan with good results. We believe IrpiMedia already has a unique approach to underrepresented communities and issues, and through this fund it could increase its capability of representing them.

Target group

This project has several beneficiaries - chief among them are the local reporters and newsrooms IrpiMedia collaborates with in this project. Publications will be housed on IrpiMedia’s website with more than 315,000 Italian and international readers annually and promoted through our newsletters and social media networks of more than 20,000 followers, contributing to awareness and growth of the local newsrooms to broader audiences.

Additionally, the workshops outlined below will benefit reporters by adding new tools to their belts. IrpiMedia is one of the only organizations supporting freelance journalists, adding to the pool of diversified reporting that will assist in the growth of a free, fair and independent press in news deserts in Italy. Experts with interest in the findings of investigative reporting such as NGOs, activists and grassroots organizations will also benefit from this growth in transparent reporting by having broader material and evidentiary support for their work to hold corrupt officials and entities accountable. As an addendum to the publications, the workshops will contribute to the creation of an investigative manual that can be accessed for tools, good practices and guidance in conducting investigative reporting.

Last, but not least, Italian society and the Mediterranean ecosystem will benefit from increased awareness of public interest topics that are freely accessible and available in both Italian and English.

Goals of the project

The project’s impact is both societal and journalistic. Societally, the project will enhance the awareness of citizens to topics of public interest that include infringement of their human rights particularly in areas controlled by organized crime. Additionally, the project will raise the voices of the voiceless in three primary communities to bolster weakened democracy in Italy and further across the Mediterranean region, and become a point of reference for topics and events of public interest. The project will also sow the seeds of investigative reporting in this region to promote growth in news deserts through its cross-border collaborations and journalistic workshops. Collectively, we will measure the success of these impact goals through a combination of qualitative and quantitative indicators that include event attendance, social media reactions and surveys. 

About the media outlet

Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI) is unique as the only nonprofit publisher of investigative journalism in Italy, and was launched to address the broader social issue of a failing independent press that in turn contributes to an unaware society and weakened democracy in the country. Since its founding in 2012, IRPI has become a model to other independent journalism centers in the Mediterranean for its expertise, and has enjoyed exponential growth in digital audiences in Italy and abroad. IRPI’s expertise on tracing Italian organized crime around the world has made it a crucial partner to many international consortiums, and IrpiMedia has been the only Italian media partner of important impactful cross-border projects like Suisse Secrets coordinated by Suddeutsche Zeitung and OCCRP. Our goal is to bolster IRPI’s position in the Italian and European media ecosystem, and overall to foster positive change in the social issue of a weakened press and weakened democracy in the Mediterranean.