Chi, Cosa, Dove, Quando e Perche’??

Picking up a newspaper in any country is actually a sort of wonderful trip into its pathos. In Italy, newspapers are like those brain-teasers you did as a kid. No wonder their elderly are so sprite, they work their brains on the morning daily.
To get into the read, first, you must decide on which ‘bent’ your supposedly objective editors are taking (right, left, center, communist, capitalist, you name it).
Then, just skimming the headlines often tells you the entire story.
But, if you are fearless enough to delve right in, you’ll find that they will have none of the famous 5Ws-in-the-1st paragraph-style of writing. No, in Italy you must don your best Sherlock Holmes cap and try to figure out the who-dunnit for yourself. This, due to the fact that every single story, right down to a common break-in, will usually have political repercussions and a half a dozen conspiracy theories to go right along with it.
This week’s big story is that they’re losing thousands of bags a day at Rome’s airport. Ask the employees, it’s because they’re under-staffed and overwhelmed. But, two weeks on, the headlines scream of ‘Sabotage!’. Funny though, after putting in 80 more workers, the story and the problem has died down.
And, dare you step into the middle of a long-running story, well, you will never get those tedious summations you find in American reporting (now…what crime did OJ commit, again?). Sometimes, it’s just easier to go to the bar, and openly ponder, ‘so, what is it that happened here?’ And, depending on the political bent of the clientele, you can feast on a smorgasbord of responses; each one with its own conspiracy theory to boot. But to come to (your own) conclusion, you must read on and on and then, read between those same lines in order to ascertain if Mr. Mostarda did it in the Cucina with a Candelabra.