Agensir.it is renewed. A new layout and new content for the website of the Religious Information Service (Servizio Informazione Religiosa – SIR) on the eve of its 30th birthday, that in 2018 we will have the opportunity to celebrate in full!
Where does this transformation originate from? From two guiding principles: the act of listening and our history. Far from being a window dressing aimed at “whitewashing” the existing layout, it originates from the yearning to give a new shape to what already exists – on the wake of the teachings of Pope Francis’ Magisterium – to organize things differently. A veritable “reform” based on listening and on tradition.
Listening is necessary for communication. First of all is requires silence: the indispensable condition to perceive every uttered word and grasp its meaning. Over the past months we sought to give a shape to these communication principles. We concentrated on listening before everything else, first to each other, and then to the various local realities, of human and geographic nature, that we encounter every day in our news service.
We collected reflections and suggestions. First of all: increased memory, in order to seize the details within the whole picture. Not a slogan but a working plan that we put into effect in the new home page, guided by a form of internal coherence, in continuity with the flow of news and in-depth reflections, shunning the “disposable communications” approach
For us at SIR, news must not only be marked by “newness”, it should also preserve the trait of memory, for there can be no identity without memory.
This is true especially in the area of media-communication, whose boundaries, under the drive of modern technologies, are growing increasingly blurry. The new layout of Agensir.it seeks to respond to this “creed”, by offering paths of understanding of major daily events.
We will follow the news agency’s fast pace whilst keeping up the patient pace of those who seek to understand the deepest meaning of topical events.
This brings us to the foundations of our history, characterised by service to the Italian Church, to diocesan weeklies, to Europe, and to the rest of the world. Our service will be thus renewed creatively. The news on the Italian Church will be thus enriched by the vital and informal relations with the National Office for Social Communications of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI), with the aim to optimise our accounts of the life of the Church. A space will be devoted to communication with other CEI media outlets (Avvenire, Tv2000 e InBlu Radio).
Such efforts will be coupled by our traditional focus on diocesan weeklies. In fact, an innovation included in the new layout is the possibility for readers to share their news reports from our home page, to provide an in-depth understanding of the Italian territory in its multifaceted realities. Furthermore, our European news reports will continue informing on the activity of Bishops’ Conferences, ecclesial bodies (CCEE and COMECE), European institutions, and on the activity of cultural and social organisms. That’s not all: a new “Balkans-Europe section” will serve as a source of information, already present in the focus given to this vast, complex and “diverse” Europe, whose Balkan region is marked by open wounds, countless challenges, and new hopes. The Balkan region is experiencing deep transformations at social, cultural, economic and religious level which we intend to learn more about, understand, and narrate, in the awareness that these Countries are important elements of Europe’s history and identity, and where an essential part of Europe’s future is at play.
Finally, we shall continue following world events focusing on various areas, notably on the United States, given the topical developments that involve the American continent. Our commitment is also to expand our reports on Africa, to know and make known the root causes of the migration of men and women. Attention will be equally given to Asia and Latin America. With a due clarification:
The frame of reference is not the geographic border but the anthropological and existential horizon.
The points of reference are the human person and his dignity, along with the communities that people live in here and now. This perspective and this background can only lead to a communication service that is respectful of the human person. We believe in it, and in this renewed service for the Church and the territory we wish you all a fruitful “browsing!”
(*)Sir editor-in-chief
