Francesca Sofia Cocco, from Freelancer for Sardinia's Daily to Editor of Tra i Leoni
Francesca Sofia Cocco is an enthusiast. She recounts the experience that led her today to hold the position of director of Tra i Leoni [Between the Lions, a reference to the two bronze lions at the entrance of Via Sarfatti 25], the student newspaper, with a joy and an enthusiasm that never leaves those who cross her path indifferent. Francesca is attending the third year of BIEM, the Bachelor in International Economics and Management and she arrived at Bocconi from Cagliari, the city where she also did her first stint in journalism. A path that she is so passionate about that she is considering making a job out of it.
"I'm an extremely curious person," she says. "What I love about journalism is the possibility of knowing, of investigating events and their causes. I especially love interviews because they allow me to get in touch with other people's experiences".
As soon as she entered Bocconi in 2018, she immediately started collaborating with Tra i Leoni and other student media. She remembers the first interview she did as a Bocconian very well: "It was the presentation event for a new series on management done in collaboration with Corriere della Sera", she explains. "I saw that the President of Bocconi was participating and I asked the student newspaper to cover the event for them. It was a great satisfaction, on my first assignment, to be able to bring home an interview with Mario Monti, as well as Gianmario Verona and Daniele Manca, deputy editor of Corriere della Sera".
However, Francesca Sofia's spirit of initiative goes back a long way. "I've dreamed of being a journalist since I was 12," she says. "At 16, I asked Cagliari and Sardinia's newspaper, the Unione Sarda, to become columnist for their series featuring high school students' opinions on their lives and the world. I wrote about fifty articles, from May 2016 until 2018, when I left for Milan". It was in the regular feature titled "Seen by us" that Francesca interviewed the mayor of Cagliari and wrote about musician Ezio Bosso. In fact, music is another passion vying for the heart of the young journalist: "At that time I was studying piano at the Music Conservatory, but I was unable to graduate because I also attended Liceo Classico and did not have time for everything."
Journalism, however, continues to permeate every aspect of her life, starting with her high school graduation essay: "I composed it with articles on topics from various subjects assembled together, as if they were the various sections of a newspaper". In the end, "four of those articles were published in the column for Unione Sarda".
That the Sardinian newspaper had smelled a budding journalist in Francesca Sofia also emerges from the fact they asked her to be a reporter for her high school exams, recounting her feelings and the point of view of young people in what is considered one of the early trials of adult life (incidentally, she then aced the Maturità with 100 cum laude), then gave her a summer job at the daily.
After this apprenticeship at a major newspaper, Francesca Sofia arrived at Bocconi. Here, in these less than three years (and with Covid to boot), she still manages "professional" exploits. Among these, the greatest occurred when she worked for Radio Bocconi and was sent to the 2019 Sanremo Song Festival. On that occasion, an event occured that makes her feel part and parcel of the world of journalism: "During the final press conference, a question of mine triggered Ultimo, the singer who had finished in second place after Mahmood. There was already tension between him and the press and my question really set him off. Colleagues from other newspapers also seized on the opportunity opened by my question to explore the story. It was strange and exciting to see across all the media the video clip showing Ultimo's piqued reaction and me in the background asking the question. At that moment I truly felt part of the press".
But who would Francesca Sofia interview, if she had the choice? "For sure I would like to interview the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella. And if I had the opportunity to talk to anyone across history, I would like to ask one of those Sumerians who invented writing what it feels like to have started to communicate in such a revolutionary way compared to the spoken word. An exceptional event that marked the end of prehistory and the beginning of history".
Meanwhile, Francesca Sofia Cocco is grappling with her mandate as editor-in-chief of Tra i Leoni. Her inaugural issue, out in these days, it is all devoted to Generation Z: "We want to recount Covid from the perspective of those born in the 2000s. Ours is a generation that cares about what happens in society".