Alessio Vinci blazes and conquers CNN **
The young reporter has been Rome bureau chief for a year
7 May 2002
by Lorenzo Peiroleri

A young, brilliant and successful reporter. Alessio Vinci, born and raised by Italian parents in Luxembourg, is the bureau chief for CNN in Rome, covering news concerning Italy, the Vatican and the Balkans. He was assigned to this post on January 2001, after working for more than ten years with the Atlanta-based all-news channel.

Vinci started to immerse himself in the world of news reporting when he was very young. One summer while he was attending the European School in Luxembourg, he spent a big chunk of his time in news bureaus, looking to “steal” a modest job. “I’ve always liked writing—since I was little, I liked writing poetry and composing songs, playing with words. I started to realize that I wanted to be a journalist. At first, I wanted to write for fun*; I hadn't thought about being a journalist.” After high school, Vinci moved to Milan where he took up Political Science in the Università Statale. In Italy, he kept in mind that journalism is a field not as easy as the rest, and the university atmosphere wasn’t suitable for him. It was inadequate for someone who wants to follow the news and travel all over an ever-changing world. It was the end of the 1980’s, and the fall of Communism was imminent.

A bit hesitant, Vinci decided to go to CNN in Atlanta on scholarship. “I was then in Romania, which was without Ceaucescu. I was sad because I knew that to leave Europe during a very delicate moment and to pursue journalism (with CNN) also meant losing a big chance to follow and tell the story (in Romania) from the front lines. For a while, in Atlanta, I was writing for leisure*, but when they (CNN) found out that I was fluent in different languages like Italian, German, French, English and Russian, they transferred me abroad.” From then, the Gulf War broke out, and Vinci was assigned with a group of journalists who were responsible for organizing and producing the news that came in from the war zone. “I was working with editing, and I helped coordinate the reporters’ assignments. It was a very important experience for me, because it made me understand how the production system of CNN works.”

After the Gulf War and with a contract in hand, Vinci returned to Italy for a holiday. Shortly afterwards, there was a growing certainty of a coup d’état in Russia. “I called my superiors in CNN, and they offered me an assignment in Russia. I had the possibility of getting a visa easily, and so I went. The trip soon became a five-year stay. I covered all the events during that crucial period—the coup d’état, the rise of Boris Yeltsin, the fall of the Soviet Union, and even the war in Chechnya. It was a great experience for a debuting journalist like me. There were reporters from all over. The world watched with apprehension what was happening in Moscow, and there I was, covering the events for CNN.”

In 1996, Vinci transferred to the Berlin bureau, where he continued to cover the events in Russia and all over Europe, as well as US President Bill Clinton’s diplomatic visits to China, South Korea, as well as the Balkans. Three years later, with the war breaking out in Kosovo, Vinci moved to Belgrade. “It was becoming more evident that there would be a war, and if I would go into Serbia, I wouldn’t be able to leave and come back. That was how I convinced CNN to open a bureau (in Belgrade). It was a good move that allowed me to be the first to follow the NATO bombings and then the revolt that broke out in Belgrade in October 2000, which then brought down the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. I was the only broadcast journalist to report live from Belgrade—a great distinction, and the recognition of a harrowing year-and-a-half assignment even brought me the Edward R. Murrow Award.” After the experience in the Balkans, Vinci was transferred to the Rome bureau, but continued to cover the world’s hot spots from up front. Ultimately, he had been in Afghanistan for three months.

Next to the moments of great distinction like those after the report about the revolt in Belgrade, there are always dangerous situations. “The danger is part of our job. I myself was frightened on more than one occasion. On January 11^th 1995 in Chechnya, I went to interview the President in his residence in Grozny. Shortly afterwards, the bombings started, and the palace started to crumble. My television crew and I ran off to escape, and we were miraculously unhurt, with the cameraman who stayed in the car—our incredible escape in the midst of gunfire and missiles. Even in Afghanistan, I encountered a great risk. I was in a prison in Mazar-el-Sharif, where the revolt broke out, and a CIA agent was killed. On the day before the start of the revolt, a grenade exploded a few meters from where I was standing, interviewing another prisoner. Fortunately, there was enough distance to avoid the worst damage, and there weren’t any fatalities. But if the revolt had broken out that day, we would’ve been dead.”

To a reporter, it’s always a difficult job to find “an original way of recounting an event and looking at a story without ever forgetting that there has to be, above all, comprehensiveness. The message has to be clear. Journalism, therefore,” Vinci concludes, “is a profession that influences all aspects of one’s own life, the emotional ones most of all. To come back home, after having been in the war zone, is very difficult. My friends look at me curiously and when they ask, I tell them what I’ve done. After a while, it gets boring talking about myself. Or they tell me about what they've done, the last movie they watched, a concert, an evening which I wasn’t able to spend with them. I feel left out, and I find myself imagining what might be the next story to tell.” Њ

** I made up that title; it's a bit close to the original, though. I think. --ivc