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Casa ANSA, telling 70 years of agency history

Casa ANSA, telling 70 years of agency history

History of news agency 'metaphor for entire country'

Rome, 21 January 2015, 13:14

Redazione ANSA

ANSACheck

- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

-     ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

(by Michele Cassano).
    On January 15, 2015, ANSA news agency celebrated the 70th anniversary of its founding and its first news article reporting Allied air strikes in Germany as World War II entered its final throes. Since then, day after day, the cooperative created on the initiative of dailies published in Italy's liberated areas has woven together the threads of the nation's history and has often taken part in it. In his book Casa ANSA - the Country's Diary for 70 Years (Centro di documentazione Giornalistica publishers, 232 pages, 20 euros) former ANSA deputy editor Carlo Gambalonga tells the story of those 70 years as only someone who spent almost 40 of them at the news agency can. The book released on January 8 is not a memoir, however.
    Following a year of research and interviews, the journalist has been able to bring to light unknown facts about ANSA's past. "This is the first book that tells the evolution of the agency, which is a metaphor for the history of Italy itself," the author says. "The agency sprang from the Liberation and became a symbol of independence and objectivity".
    "I chose to dedicate my book to two colleagues that are no longer with us, Pasquale Faiella and Francesco Marabotto," he said.
    "They represent ANSA's two defining characteristics - the former its fervor and passion in seeking out the news, and the latter its rigor and seriousness in publishing it".
    From its debut to the growth that led to its becoming the fifth largest news agency in the world, Gambalonga tells of how its offices moved from one location to another, starting in Via di Propaganda - which had been that of the historic Stefani agency founded in the mid-19th century - to its current headquarters in Via della Dataria. Long ago, when the pope ruled from his seat in the nearby Quirinal Palace just two buildings away the cardinal of the apostolic dataria (an office in the Roman Curia abolished in 1967) was busy writing for the sake of future generations, ANSA Chairman Giulio Anselmi notes in his preface to the book. The international importance that the agency took on is evinced by its being cited, for example - the author says - in Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa. It has also been praised by late writer and journalist Luigi Compagnone for the language used.
    "While Stendhal liked the style of the civil code," the writer noted, "I like that of ANSA, its robotic style".
    The story leads from the first, unofficial leadership by Renato Mieli - discussed in the book by his son Paolo - to the lengthy, highly productive period under Sergio Lepri and down to the last twenty years under editors-in-chief Bruno Caselli, Giulio Anselmi, Pierluigi Magnaschi, Giampiero Gramaglia and Luigi Contu. "The special aspect of working in a news agency," said the current editor-in-chief, "is that you are at the very center of what is happening in the world".
    ANSA played a vital role in reporting on national disasters such as the breaking of the Vajont dam in 1963, the 1980 earthquake in Irpinia and the Florence flood of 1966, which then-president Giuseppe Saragat learned of through the agency. More recently, ANSA was 'first on the scene' of the 2012 Costa Concordia shipwreck, transmitting eyewitness testimony from passengers on the doomed cruise liner even before the government itself had been officially informed of what turned out to be Italy's worst maritime disaster since World War II.
    The agency has racked up many successes: from being the first to report the news of Pope Benedict XVI's resignation thanks to Vatican correspondent Giovanna Chirri's knowledge of Latin, to its many iconic photographs.
    The book also covers difficult editorial choices the agency was faced with during its long history. One of these was deciding whether or not to publish a farewell to Italians by Umberto II of Savoy, Italy's last king who ruled just one month before the Italian people voted to abolish the monarchy and become a republic in a 1946 referendum.
    Another was whether to publish the first communiques by the extreme-left Red Brigades terrorist organization.
    "In both cases, the choice was to publish everything," the author noted.
    "This was part of the agency's duty towards the Italian people". The book, Gambalonga's fifth, is at the same time a journey through the news and through the world of the professionals that dedicate their lives to reporting it.
    These included many women as well as men, even before the gender quota debate arose in Italy. Some of these journalists have become famous, said the author.
    "But most are unknown," Gambalonga said. "They work for the news and for notoriety. They serve their country anonymously". One of the exceptions is Berlin correspondent Riccardo Ehrman, who was carried in triumph during rejoicing over the fall of the Berlin Wall after being recognized as the person who asked the question on television that led to the announcement that the border had been opened.
    "This is the incident that made the strongest impression on me," Gambalonga said. "It constituted a sort of recognition for us all. It was as if all ANSA journalists were being carried on their shoulders along with him".
   

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