Following a poll of 100,000 private firms by the Union of Italian Chambers of Commerce (Unioncamere), recently there's been a little coming out about the contacts that are needed in Italy in order to work (read also Buzzurro on this).
I was wondering, may be this quite strange coming out is due to the year coming to an end, when contracts have to be renewed, and the desperate young journalists are trying to cry for help on the outside.
Yet outside everybody is in the same situation, and cannot help them.

The "raccomandazioni" are needed everywhere, and especially in those professions that are more delicate, such as professor at the University or journalist, physician or lawyer.
In those realms, the meritocracy comes always in second after a good contact.

To this awful mafiosa situation you have to add the fact that the young professionals who get the job, get absurd slavery deals, work for years for few money and learn to prostitute themselves and their ideas quite immediately.
In the world of journalism the situation is particularly cruel, since managers, directors, are all paid incredibly well.

On the web magazine puntocom there's a column dedicated to the anonymous letters of young journalists who want to denounce the annoying and humiliating situations they have to endure in their profession.
This reading is, frankly, a slope down in a well-known hell.
The real welcome to professional Italy.

Consider this for instance (all translations by Italy is Falling):

I am a journalist occupied everyday full time in a press agency. I am paid €800 monthly ($945), from which you have to deduct all expenses (!), health insurance, supplementary insurances, insurance for the profession, judicial protection, days off for illness, 20% of taxes as non-wage earner, Inpgi¹ and much more. I am left with €500 monthly ($590)². With this money I should live, or rather, survive. I consider myself under poverty line although I have a degree, a Master, a professional title and a profession experienced with 10 years of sacrifices. For the State I am a "collaborator" without any ties... as a matter of fact I am a newcomer redactor.

or this:

All right, I admit it, I am a "raccomandato", but an involuntary one. Relatives more or less distant take care, with the sole force of their name, of my working moves. In other words: willingly or not I always find myself favored regardless my career and my ability with the profession. Now I am in an editorial staff, pampered by a senior editor aware and cringing in front of the power that governs him. I wish I could sign the pieces I write because appreciated and instead I get out on the page only because the print of my vague compositions pleases who's over them³.

and more:

I am a program director in RAI (the italian public broadcasting service). My situation is similar to that of tens of colleagues that find themselves exploited into editorial staffs, badly paid and with the sword of Damocles of sweating the renewal of the contract (every year) subjected to a three months halt. It's not rewarding at all.. to crawl at the court of the senior editor or whoever for him in the hope to renew the sign for the next year. Nine months of sweating and humiliations during which the last two or three spent for an "endorsement campaign", made of wanderings in search of vacant spaces just in case your boss changes his mind about you...

Well, I could be cruel now. I could say, Guys, you wanted it. Why you decided to be journalists in the first place? Because journalists have power, the greatest power of them all in our society. But they don't share it easily, don't they. So it's all your fault, because you wanted a share of the demonic powers, and now you are in hell. Satanic.

Still the point after all, is not about this or that category.
It is about, once again, our fucked up country.
This systematic spreading of contacts in order to work is the perfect mafioso system by which everone can be blackmailed and controlled.
We don't need to build a Police Nation, like in the U.S., because we already have our Mafia Nation.

No genuine creative, unconventional qualities can make their way here, where is more important to be obedient than be confident. And where no quality is really rewarded but kinship.
What future can this country have under such conditions? Oh, it's already known, it's the Future of Mafious Certainty. We're all looking forward to it.

1. I don't now what that is, may be the welfare for the category.
2. Just to give you an idea, consider that in large italian cities such as Milan or Rome the average rent for a small apartment goes around €500, 600 monthly.
3. Why don't you just write something unpleasant then?