Media News - Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Tiscali founder buys former party paper

L'Unita, once the mouthpiece of the mighty Italian Communist party (PCI), was Tuesday bought by an internet billionaire. The deal testified both to the paper's scant appeal and the growing power of a tycoon who has sometimes been described as the left's answer to Silvio Berlusconi. Renato Soru, the founder of the international broadband operator Tiscali, entered politics five years ago. He has since been elected governor of Sardinia and joined the leadership of Italy's main opposition, the Democratic party. Details of the deal were not immediately available, but L'Unita's outgoing proprietor said the daily would become the property of a foundation established by Soru. Press reports had earlier valued the company at EUR 20m. In recent years, L'Unita was a shadow of its former self. It was founded in 1924 by the Marxist revolutionary Antonio Gramsci as a paper ‘for workers and peasants’. At its height in the mid-1970s, it was selling up to 250,000 copies. Its contributors included the novelist Italo Calvino. The appearance in 1976 of a more independent left-of-centre daily, La Repubblica, began a slow decline accelerated by the fall of the Berlin wall and the dissolution of the PCI. Today, L'Unita's circulation is thought to be below 50,000. Staff are hoping the web-savvy Soru can give L'Unita a new lease of life on the internet. (The Guardian)

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