Il giornale — The Newspaper

Four papers on one desk

Nadia has four newspapers out because an Italian press review needs at least that many. The national dailies are openly positioned — not party organs, but each with a known politics that shapes what goes on the front page and what goes in a trafiletto — and the convention is that you read across them rather than choosing one. Corriere della Sera and la Repubblica are the two largest, il Sole 24 Ore is the business paper and does the clearest reporting on anything with numbers in it, and most readers add a third for its editorial line rather than its news. Italians will tell you which paper a claim came from before they tell you the claim, and this is not cynicism: it is the same information an English reader gets from a masthead and expects to be given. Two things surprise anyone arriving from Britain or America. Print circulation has collapsed further and faster in Italy than almost anywhere in Europe — la tiratura of the largest daily is a fraction of what it was twenty years ago — and yet the edicola survives, because it sells transport tickets, collectible part-works, and the local paper, which in most of Italy outsells the national ones. Note also that there is no equivalent of the British tabloid. The sensational material that an English paper would put on a front page goes to television in Italy, which is the subject of the next lesson.