I started to write for a local publication called TAPinto Greater Olean this fall semester. Before that, I received a crash course in local journalism with a summer internship at Positano News. The online publication based in Piano, Italy, covers a range of local communities surrounding the popular tourist destination of Positano, Italy.
On my first day, I arrived at the office with another St. Bonaventure University intern, Marnique Olivieri-Panepento, who has written for TAPinto Greater Olean. Our boss told us we would start the day with un café. Before we knew it, we arrived at a coffee shop that outdates those in the United States and were taught how to cleanse our palate with gas water to get the purest first sip of espresso.
Next, we were given a tour of the kitchen, while our boss was telling us to take photos and interview the owner of the shop. We learned quickly that when covering a local community, anything and everything is a story.
Over the next four hours, we met a variety of local business owners, toured a lemon farm, took photos with some goats and learned about the incredible history of the small Italian commune.
As we walked, our boss, news director Michele Cinque, imparted upon us the lesson he found most important for covering a small community.
“A journalist wears out their shoes,” he would say while making worried glances at the heels I learned to never wear to work again.
At Positano News, the community was the news. People’s appreciation of the coverage Positano News provided them was apparent when we walked around the various towns and people would yell “Michele Positano News bene bene.”
The value that Italians put on local journalism was demonstrated in the access we had to the community. We crashed not one, but two weddings. The first time we simply stopped in for a minute to see a church and also to find out where the couple was from.
The second time, not only did we stay for the whole wedding, but I was made to join the video crew. We did not find out until after we stayed that the couple was from the town the church was in, Vico Equense. It was so rare that a local couple could afford to get married in the ideal tourist destination that it was news. Not only was our unannounced presence not questioned but Olivieri-Panepento and I were given lemon granitas and wooden fans by the wedding party and the bride made direct eye contact with me, an underdressed stranger filming her wedding, and smiled as she walked down the aisle.
During our five-week internship, Olivieri-Panepento and I published articles about small businesses including a coffee factory spanning five generations, the history of ancient churches and villas, a review of a Michelin-starred restaurant and guides for English-speaking tourists.
My favorite article was about superficial tourism. It came through a quick stop to speak with a man sitting on the stairs in Positano. At first, I was confused about why we were speaking to him. At the time we were on our way to speak with the mayor of Positano. Why were we stopping to speak with a man sitting on the stairs who Cinque didn’t even appear to know?
It turned out to be one of the best interviews of my early journalism career. He spoke about how tourism had transformed the once serene town of Positano for the worse and his sadness regarding the fact that most people didn’t know any of the rich histories of the town. He then went into his shop and came out with two limited edition John Steinbeck books called “Positano,” which he gave to us as gifts. From this, I learned that no interview is not worth having.
While time has not allowed me to explore the Olean community with the same depth of my temporary home in Italy, I hope to use the remainder of my time with TAPinto Greater Olean to apply the lessons of hyper-local journalism I learned abroad to the Olean area and to any community I cover in the future.
This article was originally published as a column for TAPinto Greater Olean’s Let’s Tap About It.