The Osservatorio is a non-profit organization, which works with about 1,5 million ‘high school’ (ages 14-19) students across the country. “Our goal is to involve the young and build citizenship through newspapers,” said Pierfrancesco Salvetti, from the Osservatorio.

It helps newspapers – and young readership – in three main ways:

- by supplying newspaper-related information to teachers, including meetings with them, courses for teachers about newspapers, as well as the publication of free handbooks about papers’ didactic values for teachers.
- By sending out newspapers to classrooms across the country one day a week, including 10 copies of Corriere Della Sera, 10 copies of the leading local newspaper, and 10 copies of the business paper Il Sole 24 Ore (for high school students only). Students then study with newspapers for one hour per week.
- The Osservatorio’s third main initiative, perhaps of most importance to papers, is the compilation of a massive young readers newspaper survey, carried out by the Eurisko institute, across all participating schools. The survey questions the students’ interests and asks them for ideas as to the ideal newspaper in the future.

The Osservatorio then organizes an annual press conference reuniting newspaper publishers and editors to reveal the results of the research, which gives the newspaper industry real insight into young readers’ likes.

Source: Pierfrancesco Salvetti