Why the magpie?
How Gazzetta got its name, and the idea behind it.
The short story
In the 1600s, some of Italy's first newspapers were news sheets called gazeta, named after a small Venetian coin that matched the papers' price. Some suggested the word came from gazza, the chattering magpie that spread news.
The magpies aren't collectors of shiny objects. They are selective, attuned to their environments. That felt like a good model for media work: relevance comes from understanding how people live, not from broadcasting louder.
The longer story
Autocratic environments flatten media into sameness. But the societies underneath are anything but. They're rich in experiences that can inform and expand horizons.
We started out looking for better stories. We've reported from, worked with, and led newsrooms in some of the hardest places for journalists incl. China, Myanmar, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia. Along the way we learned that what matters is writing not just about communities but for them.
When journalism connects with how people actually live, it creates its own momentum. People share it because it's useful, not because an algorithm pushed it. That's the foundation of resilience: information people choose to pass on.
How organizations navigate these conditions offers lessons for anyone providing civically relevant information. The path forward isn't about begging platforms for goodwill. It's about competing on utility in a marketplace of time and attention.
We work with newsrooms, technology companies, and funders through audience research, service design, digital security, and iterative product development. Our mission is to help information providers move from a theory of change to a theory of service — addressing the fundamental problems of irrelevance and disconnection.
The challenges aren't just external like surveillance, harassment, intimidation, violence. More often they're internal: lacking clarity on who you serve, what problems you solve, and how to measure success beyond reach metrics. The organizations that work are the ones willing to test, iterate, and discard what doesn't.