Are we still useful to society and to the world of wine? That’s the question that has been on my mind for some time now. Last year, in fact, I celebrated twenty years as a professional (and fully thirty since my first steps in a newsroom), as well as the same anniversary for this publication, and I found myself reflecting on the issue while also speaking with various producers.
The profession has certainly changed. In 1995, when I started, computers had made their way into newsrooms and page layout was done on screen; but, for example, the steady flow of press releases still arrived by fax, and using the (landline) telephone was part of everyday life. There was also a lot—truly a lot—of legwork, going out and chasing stories. My first steps (a few years later) into the world of wine journalism (with the starry-eyed enthusiasm of a young beginner) were marked by the sense of a forceful, influential press—read and listened to.
But has the role of those who write about, narrate, and evaluate wine really changed that much? The decline in readership (generally speaking) and in buyers would seem to show a waning attachment to journalism, and thus underline this trend. I want to take a clear position, emphatically. Certainly, as the wine sector at large—but also as the press itself—we must engage in serious self-criticism and understand that the “liquid society,” to borrow Bauman’s well-known expression, requires different tools and different languages.
Yet perhaps precisely because it is liquid—because it still lacks solid structures—it must defend what is solid, such as journalism: a tool of resistance against homogenization and against the absence of critical awareness.
Journalism carried out by professionals—who have mandatory training, a code of ethics to respect, and an apprenticeship behind them—will become, in a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence (extremely useful, but something that must be governed), a bulwark for genuine understanding and real analysis, especially as AI can generate “news” and can also facilitate misinformation and fake news.
This applies as well to the world of wine, which in my view increasingly needs interlocutors who observe it through the eyes of those who live it every day.
I therefore strongly reaffirm the role of journalism and of those who communicate it with respect and transparency, with the conviction that without a free and professional press, we all lose something.
Not to mention that, ultimately, a good article and a good review will become the object of searches by GPTs (now the leading tool for consultation), and in my view these sources will be the most credible and verifiable—not only by the technology itself, but also by the user/reader.
Long live the press!
Riccardo Gabriele
