2024-02-06 16:46:39
by ALDO GRASSO
In Media culture. From printed paper to digital fragmentation (Carocci) talks about how the third page has changed over time: from literary gazettes to the era of social networks
The form of journalism, the paths of news, are experiencing a sort of destructuring. In the digital world, the publishing industry no longer has real control of its contents and therefore of its future, because it depends more and more on news aggregators and social networks… A growing number of users come across news unintentionally, phenomenon that occurs in particular thanks to Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. In his new book The culture of the media. From the printed paper to digital fragmentation (Carocci), Giorgio Zanchini addresses one of the central themes of cultural journalism, which until not long ago was identified in the famous third page and which today is experiencing a period of radical pulverization (one is worth one even in critical site).
On the one hand, new technologies have revolutionized information, the publishing world and cultural communication in general; on the other hand, the dispersion of the places where culture is spoken of makes it much more difficult to identify critical hierarchies, authoritative judgment, validation of an opinion: the world of third pages, of high and monitored culture, has become a universe of blurred boundaries, made up as it is of myriads of sites, blogs, online magazines, influencers and bookmakers. Zanchini’s excellent book recounts the long evolution of this sector, from the literary gazettes of the late seventeenth century to contemporary fragmentation, and offers an accurate and updated snapshot of what is happening today in newspapers and magazines, on TV and radio, on social media and on the platforms.
For a long time, books and newspapers were the only pillars on which the transmission of knowledge rested. Today, the role of those who select, certify and organize access to knowledge is significantly weakening, that articulated and complex activity that critics, editors and journalists have carried out for generations. Leaving aside the origins of the third page, where there was often the tradition of serial publication of serial novels by authors such as Alfredo Panzini, Luigi Pirandello, Giovanni Verga, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Grazia Deledda, Emilio Cecchi, Bruno Barilli, Giovanni Papini , the change to the third page as we still know it today took place around the mid-1960s, with il Giorno directed by Italo Pietra. The cultural pages oscillate between a more popular approach and the entry onto the scene of writers (Alberto Arbasino, Pietro Citati, Luciano Bianciardi, Mario Soldati, to name a few) who are difficult to classify and outside the conventional mold. Then it’s the turn of Eugenio Scalfari’s Republic which in the centerfold wants a combative and at the same time noble culture, such as to favor the debate of ideas every day. Finally Paolo Mieli with the Corriere della Sera: Mieli asks his editors for controversy, he himself declaring that the modern way of dealing with culture through conflicts: “I believe that every journalist must have the ability to continuously oscillate from top to bottom and viceversa”. In the following years Mieli returned to these innovations several times, explaining how one of his objectives was to be able to offer a product capable of responding to the challenge of TV.
Yes, television. We also talk about culture on TV, which often manifests itself as something episodic, occasional, unexpected and, when it appears on the screen, inevitably has the forms of appearance, of a timid leap. And therefore it is increasingly rare to find it in so-called cultural broadcasts. Culture is not a limited subject (books, exhibitions, events, dissemination, the memory of Maestro Manzi…), a genre similar to news or sport. Culture is a character of things, not a pose, not the state of mind of those who fill their mouths with the word culture.
Given the importance and pervasiveness of the means of communication in contemporary society, and the fact that the media are not just simple prostheses, but rather environments in which we are immersed, the change is underway. The new means collide with the canons of traditional cultural experience and force our minds to perform adaptation exercises: if we want to dominate them and not be dominated by them, if we do not want to lose a heritage of values on which our civilization is still based.
February 6, 2024 (modified February 6, 2024 | 5:31 pm)
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