What is DIG

Who’s who

DIG is a cultural association that supports quality journalism in all its forms, in Italy and around the world.

DIG stands for Documentari, Inchieste, Giornalismi (“Documentaries, “Investigations”, “Journalism”) and for to dig, of course. Our motto is “I wanna be your watchdog”.

Since 2015, we have been organizing and promoting a Festival that has become a reference point for journalists and women journalists who are dedicated to investigations and reportage: to them DIG offers contacts with major European broadcasters and a dedicated pitch to raise part of the budget useful to produce important stories. Since 2020 our Festival takes place in Modena, Italy.

On the association’s board are Alberto Nerazzini (president), Valerio Bassan (vice president) Davide Fonda, Philip Di Salvo and Francesca Coin.

The DIG team consists of a group of professionals working on the festival production, coordinated by Francesca Modena, Andrea Zini, Giulia Bononi and Francesca Minozzi. The association is supported by 33 members.

What we do

Each year we organize a four-day event, DIG Festival, with the goal of bringing the best of investigative journalism internationally to Italy.

Through our efforts, we seek to highlight voices and stories that are underrepresented or invisible in the mainstream media by inviting journalists, documentarians, whistleblowers, activists, writers, and artists to the stage. Our vocation is international: from 2015 to date we have welcomed 300 guests from more than 40 different countries.

The chairmanship of our international jury, composed of relevant figures in the world of journalism, has been held over the years by such distinguished figures as Naomi Klein, Paolo Pellegrin, Gavin MacFadyen, Jeremy Scahill, Günter Wallraff and Alexander Nanau.

Greetings from DIG co-founder Matteo Scanni (1970-2022)

“I am truly fortunate to be able to be, in some way, the ‘dad’ of an extraordinary group of people, a family that meets every year to exchange experiences, projects, stories, pieces of the road traveled. They are all great people, and I hope you can meet them, that you can discuss with them, that they can help you understand what this word means-the truth, or at least the search for it-that lies at the heart of everything we do. There is one thing that I often repeat to the whole DIG family, it is an English expression that I particularly like: Stay Gold, and that is don’t give in to compromise, do and keep doing what you are doing because it is the right thing, even if it is exhausting.”

DIG team

We are a small team of professionals who strongly believe in DIG’s mission to promote and defend quality journalism.

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