This study examines forms and functions of higher-order anaphora in a corpus of Italian news reports. Quantitative analysis shows a correlation between the size of the text and the subtype of anaphora (anaphoric encapsulation is more frequent in shorter texts, strict coreference in longer ones). A very common pattern of encapsulation is realised by the clitic lo as the topical object of a verb of saying, with the function of ascribing the news to an external source. As far as lexical encapsulations are concerned, information structure and syntactic form display unexpected results: non-topical and definite NPs outnumber topical and demonstrative ones. Finally, the relation between anaphora and the logical dimension of texts is highlighted through the analysis of relational encapsulations.