If you’re a regular listener of NPR, there’s no doubt that you know the name and voice of NPR International Correspondent Sylvia Poggioli. She’s reported for NPR for 41 years, and has a total of 51 years in journalism.
While Poggioli often signs off from Rome, her time as senior European correspondent has taken her around the world to France, Germany, The Netherlands, Uganda, Myanmar, just to name a few. Everywhere she traveled she covered political, economic, and cultural news like immigration, racism, Islam and the rise of the right in Europe. She's also travelled with Pope Francis on several of his foreign trips, including visits to Cuba, the United States, Congo, Central African Republic, and Bangladesh.
As of March 31, 2023 Poggioli hung up her headphones for the last time and NPR listeners will no longer hear her signature sign off. Before she established herself as NPR's longest-serving foreign correspondent, Poggioli first went to Rome after college on a Fulbright scholarship.
Some of her first jobs included translation, being an interpreter for various American theatrical companies that came to Italy, a seamstress, and even had a small part in a movie. Poggioli says she first got into journalism picking up night shifts at the English Language desk at the Italian News Agency based in Rome.
However, Poggioli already had knowledge of Italy well before she studied there because of her family's history. Her parents fled the country when it was under Mussolini for being anti-fascists. "I learned a lot about dictatorship, about authoritarianism, and that was certainly part of my, you know, upbringing... the Italy I experienced as a kid was very much the post-war boom," Poggioli recalls.
When she returned as a student in 1968, Poggioli says it was a period of great student protests across Europe and the United States.
"There was a lot of tense political ferment here. And in fact I was unable to study at any university because they were all occupied by students for all of '68 and much of '69," she notes. "So, basically I went to a lot of demonstrations and I learned about politics pretty much straight on the street."
Poggioli started covering more than politics and Italian affairs once she started traveling for NPR, and she said her parent's lessons continued to carry over. However, she notes it was also "very depressing" to work on stories such as the Balkan Wars, the wars in Bosnia and Sarajevo, and other "parts of the world that seem to be reverting back to that kind of racism and nationalism and closing in on themselves."
Poggioli admits that she hasn't developed any specific tools to help her process the traumatic stories she's covered over her career.
"You know, nobody talked about PTSD at the time... It usually hits you when you come back home, not when you're in the place, in the site, covering the war," she says.
Covering the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, a place that was Ground Zero for Europe and much of the West after China was another instance where Poggioli admits the impact was a bit delayed.
"Covering the story, which was so new, so intense, and also you couldn't even go out much. You had to do everything basically from Zoom calls, telephones and everything. But it was so intense that psychologically, it didn't hit me till quite a couple of months later. I had worked so hard on it that it hit me later," she recalls.
Despite the difficult stories, Poggioli says the unique format of public radio motivated her to keep reporting.
"I've always found it tremendously moving when I've done station visits to see what the sense of community that there is around the public radio stations in the United States. It's totally unique and the loyalty of the listeners is, you know, it's the best reward."
"The concept of sort of listener supported radio is something that is absolutely, you know, incomprehensible to most Europeans," she notes. "I've always found it tremendously moving when I've done station visits to see what the sense of community that there is around the public radio stations in the United States. It's totally unique and the loyalty of the listeners is, you know, it's the best reward. I mean, it really is."
Upon her transition out of news Poggioli hopes that she can learn to quiet her mind that has turned hyper-active thanks to her time as a journalist. "My attention span has really gotten very short and I want to go back to reading long novels," she says. "And so I'm going to have to really practice getting back into that because, you know, I'm so distracted by all the clicks and sounds of emails and WhatsApp messages and so forth. I need a break from the news and from all those sound distractions."
For now, Poggioli's plans are to work on other writing projects that aren't daily news and to continue enjoying things in Italy, like her favorite restaurant down the block from where she lives that serves "the best pizza I've ever had."
"It's very, very thin, and the very funny thing is that the chef there for years now, he's an Egyptian. And I know him well and he's learned how to make pizza the way it really should be made and that's that's my go to," she says.
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