Media relations in Italy
What to focus on when requesting a press office service in Italy
In Italy, as in the rest of the world, the media landscape has radically changed. According to Onclusive, a press monitoring company, 200 Italian newsbrands are added each year to the directory of websites to be monitored.
Meanwhile on the Internet, in the last 10 years, 38% of web pages have disappeared.
This is what emerges from an analysis by the Pew Research Center which studied almost a million web pages from 2013 to 2023.
The digital transformation has changed the way readers stay informed, and as a result the work of media relations offices is also done differently than it was just a few years ago.
The ever-growing and increasingly diverse scenario of news publishing is composed of large publishing groups, national and local newspapers, as well as new social platforms. The traditional media – printed media, radio and TV and their digital versions – are now being flanked by press platforms, smart containers that provide information through algorithms that keep track of the tastes of their users, such as UPDAY or Google’s Discover, or by specific pages dealing with information that reach out mainly through social media such as Trashitaliano, Torcha, Factanza, and Will.
The importance of traditional media in the Italian scenario
Despite the growing use of Internet, traditional media are still reaching large audiences, including segments of the population who do not use the Internet (the 2023 We Are Social survey reckoned this to be 16% of Italians) or who may not be active on social media, or who otherwise prefer more traditional, verified news sources.
With regard to information, TV in Italy still plays a predominant role, as confirmed by data published by the Centro Studi Investimenti Sociali: it is the only media that can boast 95.9 percent of the population. This data is particularly interesting when broken down, as 56 percent of us now use smart-tv or web-tv and as many as 33 percent watch mobile-tv (as opposite to 1 percent in 2007). Youtube. Google’s “tube” is in fact used by two Italians out of three (62%) and by as much as 79% of the users aged 15-29.
To this, it is also important to add that the historical and cultural configuration of the country has always prevented the establishment of a truly national daily newspaper in Italy. Corriere and Repubblica are the two most widely circulated daily newspapers, but the former sells half its copies in Lombardy while in the South it is not really even read; on the other hand, Repubblica has a more extensive circulation throughout the country, though not in all regions, and it never ranks as the leading newspaper in any regional capital. The fact that Italy is divided into 21 regions and 107 provinces implies that the press office must always carefully consider the value of local media, both off-line and on-line.
With regard to ‘printed media’, according to the system scenario data of Audipress – 2024/I edition – the dailynewspapers in Italy retain their share of 11.4 million total readers on an average day: 62% are men and 38% women, mainly over 55 years of age and 64.4% with a medium-high level of education.
The geographical distribution of readers shows greater penetration in the North-West (65.3%) North-East (68.4%) and Centre (59.9%), followed by the South (57.8%) and Islands (40.8%). The highest reading penetration is found in urban centres with 100 to 250 thousand inhabitants.
When analysing the weeklies, 8.4 million readers were reported to have read at least one publication on paper and/or digital format in the last seven days, while for the monthlies, 8 million readers read at least one publication in the last 30 days.
As noted previously, new forms of journalism in social media are having a fair amount of success, such as Will on Instagram, where dialogue with the reader on the topics is pre-eminent.
Or Fanpage, a news site that is currently offering some accurate, good journalism, but which has earned top rankings among Italian readers thanks to a handful of important scoops and lots of gossip and scandal news.
Fanpage followed the reverse growth path of traditional newspapers: instead of starting with generalist information and then developing dedicated sections, it has merged together a number of vertical sections to create a single site and spread its content through social channels.
The editorial offices of these newspapers are, however, hard to get in touch with; they provide e-mail addresses for press offices, but the telephone numbers of journalists are not as easily found as with more traditional editorial offices.
What to expect from a media relations agency in Italy
The position of Italian journalists is very tough: it already was before the crisis of the publishing industry, and now it is even more so. This does not imply that the number of journalists is decreasing, quite the opposite, but as press offices we have to keep this in mind.
On average, journalists are very open and willing to listen and, like all Italians, very responsive to everything that comes from abroad.
Despite the fact that the editorial offices have been downsized, in our opinion holding press meetings is still asound proposition, offering an opportunity to meet people in person and facilitate exchanges of information, possibly over a good meal, maybe of spaghetti.
Press tours, on the other hand, should only be organised if really necessary, as they require a prolonged travel time.
In the case of product presentations, we always suggest providing the editorial staff and the journalist with product samples to test and try out. For the journalist who has to write about it, it is inconvenient not being in the position to report on a product test.
In conclusion, doing press work today is anything but simple. Although the demands of real-time communication often lead to issuing press releases with reduced timeframes and less articulate planning, this job still requires dedication, time, experience and a profound knowledge of the new media. Effective information management remains indispensable in order to protect a brand’s reputation, reach its audience in a targeted manner and disseminate specific messages online. In the end, what really makes the difference is competence.