Background of Italian Media

The Italian Media system began the 21st century with the reliance of the traditional printed press and participation in the global shift to other systems of information outsourcing including online journalism, the spread of personal computers, and digital television. Despite increasing reliance on technology, the term "press" is still closely related to daily newspapers.

Italian newspapers have five distinguishing characteristics that set themselves apart from other western European countries; historically low levels of readership, a predominance of regional over national papers, notable lack of independence of the press, virtual nonexistence of a popular press and the existence of a group of daily "news" papers that are solely devoted to sports, religion, or other specialized topics. When discussing the background of the Italian media, I believe it is extremely important to discuss in detail these five characteristics.

The first characteristic of Italian media is most often stressed by analysts of the Italian press. Compared with the other European Union members, Italy's daily newspaper circulation ranks just above Greece and Portugal, the two least advanced Mediterranean countries. In Italy, the daily newspaper circulation in italy is about 109 per thousand citizens. In the late twentieth century readership began to grow because of the commercialization of the press however the numbers seem to be falling again.

There are many causes for low-readership in Italy, including problems matching the reader to the newspaper. In Italy newspapers are solely distributed via newsstands and the prices are very high, since the prices are determined by a joint committee of government and business. Another problem is the fact that until the 1950's, Italy's population outside of the major urban cities (like Milan and Rome) illiteracy was still extremely high in the rural areas and four fifths of the population spoke only local dialect and were not able to speak true italian. Today true spoken Italian is still in the process of being the language that every Italian is comfortable speaking. Many times journalists in Italy are not interested in trying to translate or explain unfamiliar words to the public. Since the 1950's, radio, TV and most recently the internet have been the media of choice, thus creating a decrease in newspaper circulation.

The second characteristic is the predominance of regional over national newspapers since Italy has yet to establish a truly national paper; however there are some political party-affiliated daily newspapers that are filling the void to some extent. Even though some regional newspapers are being widely circulated (such as Milan, Turin, Bologna and Venice), they tend to convey a regional bias which is linked to the agendas of the families and businesses that own the paper. One example of this would be La Stampa, who is owned by the Agnelli family, who is the major stockholders of the Fiat Company.

The third characteristic of the Italian press is its lack of independence, which sort of goes along with what I was talking about with ownership. Ownership of major newspapers by rich families, industrial groups and other financial power centers is typical, often publishing more than one newspaper. One example of a nonindustrial financial center is the Catholic Church which supports publication of L'Osservatore Romano, a widely circulated daily paper of the Vatican. It is also very common to see daily newspapers being published by political parties who use the news to circulate information to their members. Even though Italian readership is low, it is extremely politically savvy, which results in high party memberships and voting turnouts.

Italian journalism has traditionally specialized in interpretation, intricate commentary and complex analysis rather than direct news reporting and detailed descriptions of events. Italian journalists are experts at investigative in-depth reporting and there is an underlying sense of irony in the fact that the journalists are highly skilled and educated but are faced with a public that doesn't read daily newspapers in significant numbers.

The last two characteristics, non existence of popular press and presence of single non-news newspapers, are somewhat overlapping. In Italy, instead of producing tabloids (which is common in other European Union countries), Italian publishers are focused on newspapers with specialized topics that tie into the passions of the Italian public, most commonly with soccer. La Gazetta dello Sport and Il Corriere dello Sport-Stadio, two popular sports publications, will grow in circulation into the hundreds of thousands on days following a big soccer match.

I would also like to point out that while I was living in Italy, I noticed that most of the news was watched on TV at night time around the dinner table. If the newspaper was read at all it was usually the newspaper specific to the region that you were in and dealt with all the things going on in that particular area. Also, it was very common for men to gather around in groups to read the bright pink La Gazetta dello Sport, a bright pink publication, while the women would usually read horoscopes.