Turning 135 and feeling it all. And, at the same time, living each day as if it were the first. The company name provides for it: a newspaper tells the time it inhabits, moment by moment. It tries to provide keys to interpretation, information, comments. It scans the present with a gaze that holds the past by the tail. It does not think of historicizing knowing that it plays a de facto role in the creation of a collective feeling, how it will be told by posterity. Let's talk about us, excuse me, about the 135th birthday of L'Unione Sarda.
Looking inside your belly, without dwelling too much on your navel, requires a healthy exercise in modesty. Scrolling through 135 years of news, the film of an Island that continues to incessantly search for the clue to the skein of a denied development, brings everyone back down to earth, those who make the newspaper and those who read it. In the sense that it forces us to reflect, to really reason about the soil that supports us. Are we doing enough? Are we keeping quiet because we are inadequate about something? Are we contributing our due to building a bridge between yesterday and tomorrow? Do we help enough to imagine possible futures, to point out the cavities behind dangerous hyper-toothed smiles that promise progress while hiding the areas colored gray fraud (any reference to energy speculation, to stay up to date, is intentional and not coincidental)?
Leafing through the many historical pages of L'Unione also offers new and dizzying perspectives on those who decide our future, on the holders of power of today and yesterday. Governments should be forced by law to reread the articles on the amazing careers of their predecessors, followed by daring descents without climbs, for thaumaturgical baths of humility. Information remains, despite the jinxes. The superstars of politics are a bit like the Perseids in August: luminous trajectories, then sometimes sudden darkness.
For the 130 years, a round anniversary, practically yesterday but in reality already five years ago, we had done research on themes (such as work, women, military servitude) that cross horizontally the life of Sardinians. The title of these lines refers precisely to the refrain of that time, thought up for us by Antonio Marras. For the 135 we asked ourselves what is today the topic of topics, the common thread that binds us all.
We have identified one of which you can find a simple transposition here beside. An elderly lady, a child who is perhaps her grandson, the sea, in the background the profile of the Devil's Saddle. And above all the newspaper, witness of a healthy and auspicious passage between generations of readers. The illustration is created by artificial intelligence, questioned by our Claudio Rossi. It is a food for thought for the entire community of L'Unione Sarda, a collective we that includes and does not exclude: are we ready for the time of AI, to govern the future without being afraid of it? When readers want, we will talk about it again.
We have been here for 135 years for this.
