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LUCA DE BIASE IS A BOCCONI ALUMNUS AND EDITOR OF NOVA24, THE TECHNOLOGY SUPPLEMENT OF IL SOLE24ORE; HISTORIAN BY BACKGROUND, HE ARGUES YOU NEED TO TAKE THE LONGTERM VIEW TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN FREQUENT FADS AND TRUE INNOVATIONS

Luca De Biase is not prone to smile. He does try to flash a shy grin before the camera, but his face only comes alight when he talks about Bocconi. Like for many others before and after him, the Milanese university was a dream come true: a human community and an intellectual lab, and the springboard toward rewarding professional experiences. Today, at the age of 57, De Biase is editor-in-chief of Nòva, the supplement and web magazine of ilSole24ore, Italy’s financial newspaper of record, devoted to digital innovation. He is one of the innovation experts who has followed more closely the momentous changes that have occurred in the world of media. “Studying toward a DES degree at Bocconi meant having solid grounding in economics joined by a historical perspective with respect to major social and cultural changes. To this day, such a long-term, multidisciplinary, environmentally conscious approach marks my way of interpreting change and continuity in our age, so as to distinguish between the flourishing of novelties and the introduction of real innovations.”
 

Why do you consider information and media so central?
As society and individuals, we act on the basis of information at our disposal. Media tell us about the environment we live in and have a profound impact on the way we think. Today, the traditional media structure is being overhauled: yesterday the problem was the scarcity of media and spaces where to publish; in the digital age, strategic assets are the reader’s own time and the relevance of media sources. This means that the power of information is shifting from publishers to the public.

It’s a revolution that is also questioning the traditional role of the journalist.
How can we not be thrilled about meeting such challenge? Many of us have started doing this job in order to serve the reading public. This is the mission we have to rediscover. In the aftermath of the media revolution abetted by technological and organizational change, the quality of information remains the guiding light. Quality of information is the product of rigorous principles: accuracy, independence, thoroughness, lawfulness. And these become all the more important now that non-specialists are taking part in the media debate. 
 

Are you referring to the fact that on the Internet and especially on social networks, media information lacks fixed points of reference?
Social networks have led to the democratization of punditry. This is not bad in itself, because also readers’ opinion contains valuable information. But how things are is not a matter of opinion, it’s a hypothesis validated by facts obtained according to a shared method. I am not claiming information can be totally objective, but that we do collectively need to know how things actually stand, because facts is what we have in common, while opinions will always divide us in several camps, and rightly so.
 

You mentioned that the business model of publishing must change. What has to change under the impact of digitalization of content?
Putting yourself at the service of the public means seeking its attention. And you get attention by building engaging and meaningful contexts around news. Publishers can no longer avoid doing this, because the market for advertising has drastically changed and advertisers now possess sophisticated tools to measure and give value to the relation between reader and publication. In the digital era, the readership of an article or a newspaper is a precisely measured value, composed by the number of page views, average time spent on pages etc. On printed paper, advertisers pay to occupy a general space, on digital screens they pay to occupy one’s individual time, which is a much more interesting resource from their point of view. Publishers must be able to charge for this precious good they make available to advertisers.
 

In your opinion, are readers ready to pay for quality information on the web?
For specialist content, many are already doing so. According to a research study conducted by Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, a newspaper’s homepage is viewed for 70 seconds on average. Not much, all things considered. The same study has found that newspapers remain open on tablets for 15 minutes on average. Evidently such interface has more value in the eyes of readers and magazine subscriptions delivered on tablets are going rather well. The reader pays for a service that provides the new, but also offers a framework of meaning that helps recognize their relative value. The single piece of news posted on the web has no value, but the semantic context, style of presentation, organization of content that give meaning to news are worth a lot.
 

For a year now you’ve been part of the Committee for Italy’s Digital Agenda. What are the priorities?
The EU has listed seven fundamental pillars to build a digital future, including literacy, infrastructure, public administration, health care. Italy is lagging behind in all areas. The government is determined to catch up and bridge the digital gap starting from three major projects involving the relations between citizens and public administrations: a new electronic ID, the national civil registry, and electronic invoicing. Renzi has also recently spoken of kickstarting an open government approach characterized by the certifiability and traceability of all data produced by Italian government organizations. It’s another aspect of the modernization of the state, which can be turned into an asset for citizens and firms alike. However, my personal priority is digital literacy. This is where Italy is really trailing behind and school is the place where such a gap needs to be closed. There are 10 million people that attend Italian schools in any given year, but Italy displays levels of functional illiteracy that are closer to Mexico’s than Germany’s. This is unacceptable, because it not only acts as brake on the use of digital technology, but it hinders the ability to imagine what you could do with these versatile tools.

by Lorenzo Martini
Translated by Alex Foti