EVENTS Pagine Ebraiche, The Newsroom Is Open
By Ada Treves
Beginning today, the seventh edition of Redazione Aperta (Open Newsroom) will bring all the journalists of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI) in Trieste, for two weeks of work and lessons with numerous guests. It is the one occasion when all the members of the newsroom can spend long days working together, while normally they are scattered around the country and are often travelling to cover news from all the twenty-one Communities of Jewish Italy. Born in 2009, when the reality of the News Department of UCEI was only beginning its journey, now Redazione Aperta is an affirmed and solid reality.
With three printed monthly papers, numerous newsletters, both daily and weekly, and new projects always under test, the newsroom is no longer an experiment. Every year some young members from various Communities come to work with the journalists to gain some experience, a practice that in the past years has brought some of them to begin the process to become professional journalists.
This year the programme is as rich as ever: the collaboration with the prestigious Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e Traduttori of the Università degli Studi di Trieste (the best Italian school for interpreters and translators) will bring five students to begin their apprenticeship, and their presence will be a novelty along the whole of Redazione Aperta, with the extraordinary chance for them and for the newsroom to work in close contact. The first day will also be devoted to DafDaf, the Jewish magazine for kids, with guests coming from all over the country to analyse what has been done in the past year and to start planning the issues ahead. DafDaf will soon celebrate its fifth birthday, and it is good to remember how the very first meeting, where the first number of DafDaf was born, had taken place in Opicina, the residence on the Karst where the members of the newsroom are guests of the local Jewish Community during the whole of Redazione Aperta.
In the first week a walk around the city to discover the places and suggestions of James Joyce will be guided by professor Laura Pelaschiar, of the Department of Humanities of the University of Trieste, and from Rome there will be the Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, a regular guest of Redazione Aperta. Piera Di Segni, also from UCEI, that works at the weekly television programme on Judaism Sorgente di Vita, and she will spend a couple of days in Trieste to work together with the colleagues from the newroom.
From Paris, where she works as the assistant of the Chief Rabbi of France, rav Haim Korsia, Yael Hirschhorn will come to explain the challenges and the difficulties of her role, and how good communication can be so relevant in the contemporary situation, specifically in France. The president of the Union of Jewish Communities of Italy, Renzo Gattegna, and the General Secretary Gloria Arbib are also coming to Trieste, to spend a day with the journalist and in the occasion they will also meet the board of the local Jewish Community, that with its hospitality and clarity of vision has permitted in all these years to bring forth the experiment of two weeks of common work when everyone can come and join the newsroom to follow the lessons of its guests and participate in the daily life of its journalists.
The writer Viet Heinichen will guide a tour of the De Enriquez Museum, devoted to the collector who’s protagonist of one of his books, “Le lunghe ombre della morte”. All the participants to Redazione Aperta will than spend a day in Gorizia, to explore the story of a city where the Jewish Community has left a strong trace, in a place torn apart by a border that for long years split a community and marked a sad division in the continent. There it will be the turn of all the journalists to offer their guests a few lessons on themes connected to the city, from the life and works of Carlo Michelstaedter, to Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, and Carolina Luzzatto Coen.