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European Website on Integration

Other Perspectives

“Prospettive Altre” (Other Perspectives) is an online magazine based on intercultural society issues and promoted by Cospe and ANS. This website was born within an European project, Media4us, which created an online magazine in 7 different countries with an editorial staff mainly composed by immigrants and children of immigrants. In addition to this, the project provided a training course on online journalism addressed to 10 young people of foreign origin, a photo contest and a supplement on the free newspaper Metro, distributed on November 10, 2012 simultaneously on all countries involved. After the end of the European project, in Italy Perspectives pursued its adventure with the aim to go beyond the stereotypical information about immigration and to bring out the daily reality of our cities and the challenges of the intercultural societies, still under construction. The editorial staff is formed by 13 editors and writers from different backgrounds, nationalities, cultures and paths. Some of them are first-generation immigrants, others are young people born in Italy to foreign parents, living as “Italians with a different passport”. In addition to this, there is a network of collaborators and experts, who enriches the content of the website in particular with regard to more specialization area such as sports, economics and arts. Furthermore, the online newspaper is actually enrolled in the process of registration before the Tribunal of Turin and it is the first case in Italy with a non-EU citizen director.

Project Goal

The main objective of the project is to promote alternative information on immigration issues, giving voice to the journalists of foreign origin residing in different countries. Despite some improvements achieved in this last years, in the mainstream information persists a negative ways to represent migrants, such as the over representation in the black chronicles or the use of a non-appropriate language and a limited variety of sources. In addition, in the Italian media landscape, there is a few number of journalists of foreign origin and there is a lack of inclusive policies of diversity management, as it happens in other countries. It is important to promote rooms to bring out the direct testimony of a substantial portion of the Italian society: more than 4 million of migrants can no longer continue to be only the object of the information, but they want to be an active player. It is not only a matter of “giving a voice to immigrants” but also to recognize the equal opportunities to access the mass media with the aim to achieve real integration. The main problem of this editorial is to guarantee his sustainability; in fact, all the articles are paid. The website is supported by funds related to the Cospe and Ansi projects and the challenge is also to attract funding in the private sectors.

Who benefits

The beneficiaries of the project are the readers of the magazine.

How it works

The project is managed by Cospe and ANSI and the coordination of the online newspaper is assigned to Metref Karim, the editor in chief. The editorial contents are shared during live or skype meeting, while the editors write the articles to be published.

Results

There are more than 200 articles and videos posted by the online portal. The articles have touched on many topics, such as society, culture, sports, economy and focused on several Italian cities, thanks to the editors’ presence in the national territory. An important space was devoted to news from the territories, without forgetting connections with the rest of the world, as well as analyzes and topical debates to explore the changing reality. An important result is the process of the registration of the newspaper before the tribunal of Turin, after a very long and complicated bureaucratic process, we are currently awaiting for the final decision, with a non-EU director, the associate ANSI Domenica Canchano, member of the Ligurian Order of Journalists.

Evaluation

“Prospettive Altre” (Other Perspectives) is an important initiative, which emerge in the Italian sphere, in fact, there are many online initiatives relating to immigration issues, but “Prospettive Altre” is among the few that can boast an editorial spread directly connected with the territory, consisting of journalists of foreign origin and not tied to large other publishing groups. Thanks to these features, the magazine obtained a good response and interest at a national level and not only: in January 2014 “Prospettive Altre” won the “Adriatic Journalist Award”, sponsored by the Italian Union of Koper-Capodistria (Slovenia). Despite this important award, the magazine remains an initiative primarily known to those are directly affected and failed to reach a wider audience. Further, its sustainability is at risk, because funds are almost exhausted. “Prospettive Altre” gave the opportunity to many journalists, mostly young people in training and non-professionals, to try their hand at writing articles and audio-visual production. In a time when many industry initiatives have closed, including major publishing groups such as Babel TV, “Prospettive Altre” is a showcase and an important opportunity for the group of editors.

Funding and resources

The online newspaper was supported initially by the media4us project funded by the European Fund for Integration and in a second step by the Open Society and the Tuscany Region.

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Matteo Scali
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