I’ve been lucky in my life, a lot. Even as a journalist. I have been able to do beautiful things. But if I had to say today which was the most beautiful, the one that moved me most, the most unlikely, difficult, almost epic, today I would say: Italy calledthe 18-hour YouTube marathon at the start of the pandemic, March 13, 2020.
I do not know if you remember Italy called, even if you were among the millions of Italians who followed us for a while (yes, millions: in the end we will count more than twenty million contacts). But you certainly remember the surreal atmosphere of those very first days of total lockdown. The idea of ”doing something” had come to us 5 days earlier, it was on a Sunday, and they were starting to close everything. “Let’s have an online marathon”, we told each other with some friends, we raise funds for the Civil Protection and unite the country through the Internet. in 5 days and without budget. A madness. Organizing it, while the Prime Minister with the first Dpcm closed a piece of Italy every day, it was something like Blues Brothers.
A dozen people who had shared projects with me in recent years mobilized for the occasion: Paolo Iabichino, whom I had met with Wired, took charge of the name and image; Ernesto Belisario of the legal aspects; Oscar Badoino of the site; Angela Creta and Eugenio Damasio took care of social media, Gianluca Comin’s group made themselves available to do the press office; Ernesto Assante, Gabriele Fazio, Laura Delli Colli and Marino Sinibaldi helped me to mobilize the world of culture together with Mibact, Franceschini’s ministry, which helped us from the first minute by offering to broadcast the event live on its YouTube channel; Valentina Boddi kept all the pieces together trying to build a sensible lineup.
There was though one problem: we didn’t have a place to broadcast, the studios were all closed, we were in full lockdown; and we didn’t even have the people to direct, and the cameramen. It was Ernesto Faraco who helped us find a shed at the Magliana drainage pumps where we could set up a small studio with remote cameras. And when we had lost hope for directing, the day before Alessandro Torraca offered himself (with the long-distance support of Cristina Redini). There is not a person among those mentioned with whom there is no true affection. Without these bonds made of values and passion, we would never have made it.
Initially the idea was a two-hour relay race between different conductors, but in lockdown almost all the speakers had pulled back. I decided to try everything myself. At 4 in the morning I arrived at Magliana, at 6 we started the live broadcast. And it was something unrepeatable: everyone intervened, from Arbore to Fiorello, from Jovanotti to Favino, to name just four of an endless list. And we received thousands of messages from Italians, even abroad, who were experiencing that thing with us. The live broadcast lasted exactly 18 hours. And I was always there, in the studio, with my heart swollen with joy and my voice that could hardly resist (here, you understand why it croaks a bit, my problems started there). After the first fourteen hours Ernesto Assante came to give me the change, who invented the format of bedroom music: dozens of singers performed from home as they would have done all over the world for months. The last two hours I returned live, alongside the very young Cecilia Sala: at her time she was not yet well known, but she was already the best journalist of her generation. In these dramatic days Cecilia Sala is in Ukraine, from where it produces a beautiful podcast. It was a great finale. The longest marathon in the history of the Web. How lucky to have lived it.