To understand how Italian journalism is changing, looking at newspaper newsrooms or television schedules is not enough. You need to open Twitch in the middle of the day, drop into a live stream that can run for hours, and watch a community discuss headlines, statements, documents, and videos alongside the host. It is in this space that Ivan Grieco has built over the years one of the most interesting experiments in Italian digital news.
Grieco comes from the internet even before political journalism. He navigated video games, streaming, and entertainment, before progressively turning his channel into a hub dedicated to current affairs. With La Miniera, he built a daily talk show where politics, economics, and current events are addressed with pacing and language vastly different from television. Today, his work has also expanded to Pulp Podcast, where he serves as a field reporter and produces reports and political content.
Live streaming is not just the medium: it is the method
The most compelling feature of the Grieco model is that live streaming is not merely used to distribute a show that could exist unchanged on television. The live broadcast becomes part of the editorial process. An article can be pulled up, a source checked, a statement cross-referenced against a document while the audience observes the pathway leading to a conclusion.
Years ago, Grieco was already describing his format as an attempt to take newspaper headlines and content published by politicians, analyze them, and correct any inaccuracies. Today, La Miniera defines its mission as a venue where debate takes place daily, and in-depth analysis coexists with interviews and lighter segments.
This marks a major shift from traditional gatekeeping: the audience does not merely receive a finished product, but witnesses, at least in part, the construction of the interpretation. While this does not automatically make the content more accurate, it increases the opportunity to see sources, uncertainties, and corrections in real time.
A language capable of discussing politics without mimicking the talk show
One of the historical pitfalls of political news aimed at younger demographics is the belief that making it accessible requires dumbing it down. Grieco takes a different path: he retains long-form discussions, guests, counterarguments, and deep dives, but embeds them in the web's native language—made up of chat, clips, irony, reactions, and direct interaction with the community.
As early as 2021, Wired identified Grieco as one of the key Italian figures driving the rise of talk shows on Twitch, highlighting how his political live streams attracted thousands of viewers and comments. Five years later, that experimentation appears far less marginal: podcasts and creators have become platforms where politicians, journalists, and public figures agree to debates that once would have taken place almost exclusively on radio or television.
Pulp took this language out of the studio
The collaboration with Pulp Podcast added another dimension. Grieco is not merely a voice sitting behind a webcam: he has also become a field reporter. Pulp sent him, among other assignments, to Atreju and leveraged his in-depth contributions; in April 2026, the podcast published excerpts from his investigation into Russian propaganda in Italy. In June of the same year, Grieco himself was at the center of a lengthy political debate with representatives of Potere al Popolo.
This crossover between streamer, field reporter, and journalist is significant because it dismantles the boundary between the creator economy and news reporting. The creator is no longer necessarily someone who comments on work produced by others: they can break a story, interview a source, go on location, and produce a report.
The value of asking questions outside the pen
The method can generate friction. In 2026, several of Grieco's outings as a Pulp reporter sparked clashes and controversy, including a confrontation at a book launch by Marco Travaglio and an incident in Civitanova during an attempt to interview Roberto Vannacci. These are incidents for which both sides offered differing accounts, and they should not be treated as editorial badges of honor.
Yet they reveal an element of the new ecosystem: creators and podcasts are physically stepping into spaces traditionally occupied by camera crews and press reporters. Legitimacy no longer stems merely from the logo on the microphone; it must be earned through the quality of the questions, professional fairness, and a relationship of trust with the audience.
The strength lies in not asking viewers to choose between news and entertainment
Pulp Podcast embodies this hybrid model well. The format, created by Fedez and Mr. Marra, brought pop culture, politics, provocation, and interviews into the same space, earning recognition in 2025 as best Italian podcast at Best Movie Comics & Games. In 2026, the Festival dell’Economia di Trento dedicated a session to the new frontiers of news, comparing Pulp with La Zanzara.
Grieco fits seamlessly into this environment because his approach was already rooted in the idea that rigor and accessible language do not have to be mutually exclusive. A joke does not prevent opening a document; a short clip can point to a two-hour debate; a community born on Twitch can engage with foreign policy or economic affairs without anyone having to pretend they are in a television studio.
The audience becomes part of the editorial infrastructure
There is also an economic aspect. La Miniera sustains itself through platforms, subscriptions, and direct support from viewers. It is a model that bridges the gap between those who produce and those who fund news, while introducing new dependencies: on platform algorithms, monetization rules, and the ability to maintain an active community.
However, this direct relationship can allow time to be invested in content that does not necessarily have to conform to the length of a television report. A conversation can last as long as it remains useful, a source can be verified in front of viewers, and a correction can become part of the broadcast itself.
It is not the end of traditional journalism, it is the expansion of the newsroom
Portraying streamers and podcasts as replacements for newspapers would be simplistic. Traditional newsrooms retain skills, legal accountability, source networks, and investigative capabilities that are difficult to replicate individually. Likewise, creator-led journalism must face issues of verification, conflicts of interest, sustainability, and distinguishing between opinion and news.
Ivan Grieco’s most interesting contribution lies elsewhere: proving that digital journalism can develop formats of its own rather than merely chopping up television into vertical clips. A live stream can be an open newsroom, the chat can become a sounding board and at times an accountability tool, a podcast can turn into an investigative platform, and a correspondent can speak to a generation that would hardly wait for the eight o'clock evening news.
The shift is not about replacing a camera with a smartphone. It is about rethinking the relationship between journalist, source, and audience. This is where Grieco’s path, from La Miniera to Pulp, appears most compelling: not because he found the definitive formula for journalism, but because he is helping build a new grammar, in which journalism returns to being a conversation without giving up the ambition of understanding the facts.
