When Punto Informatico loses its pillars…
This clearly is a shock period for me, because after the bad, bad event of the dead hard disk I also have to deal with the leaving (already of public domain since) of De Andreis brothers from the lead of Punto Informatico, that is the news site I daily write some nonsense for and what’s more being paid for the service 
The site has changed ownership since October 2008 going from De Andreis Editore to Edizioni Master, but at least for a while things have been the same as usual - ie every day there was a mail from Paolo (De Andreis) to wait for me with the indication of things to do inside.
Then something changed and I haven’t received Paolo’s mails anymore. Or better still, I started to work with Luca (Annunziata) and Gaia (Bottà) without suffering the smallest problem through the switch, but there has been no more trace of De Andreis’ baritone voice. I’ve asked for explanations, they told me that the director was involved in other things, but behind the scenes Paolo was spending his time by diving in ancient Greek mottos among the nympheas and giving reassurances that with the hindsight sounds like a clear alarm bell for the separation still to come.
I guess the leaving of Luca Schiavoni, that irreplaceable folk of PI’s illustrations and downloads - with which I never communicated that much but that I have always valued for his work - has sped up Paolo and Andrea De Andreis leaving that was made official within the following months. It’s a shock, I said, because even though I wasn’t in touch with him anymore I imagined Paolo always at the lead of the site which I also contributed to with my daily work - either lazy and careless or “professional” and enthusiast according to the weather reports, the sleep hours I had granted myself the night before and who knows what else.
The fact than that Gaia was the one to announce me the leaving by e-mail made me even more perplexed, dubious about how to express myself on the matter and the consequences it would have had on PI. After some days of meditation - it’s a lie, actually I was too busy playing MAME to write on these pages - now I want to say some personal words on the matter as an involved person.
Frankly I think that with De Andreis leaving PI loses pretty fundamental assets, which made the difference in all these years for the site and the perception of Internet in Italy. Personally I’m bound to Paolo De Andreis work for the simple fact that he was the one, more than 3 years ago, to tell me that “maybe we can start a collaboration” after I spontaneously sent my curriculum vitae to the staff e-mail.
I’m not accustomed to say “thanks” because I rarely have a reason to, but for De Andreis I think it to be an obligation. “Thanks” for the opportunity to take part to the PI adventure, to experience with writing in a context I thought was far distant from my chances - I’m not a licensed “journalist” nor I want to become one for the upcoming 150 decades - thanks for the advices, the rebukes, the endless calls to moderation, the willingness to listen to my complaints about the delays in payments and everything.
I can’t say more on the backstage of parting between former De Andreis Editore and its bits-made creature because I don’t know more: Paolo says that the separation has been consensual and that he is currently busy with other projects, the new management confirms this and as a freelance writing every day on PI I can’t help but take these considerations for true. From a daily work point of view nothing changes for me, and to reply to Gaia which asked me if I could put my hands on something I would change the current homepage of the site, imho much less readable and “usable” than the previous one.
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