Seven reasons Il Fatto Quotidiano has

been successful
The fierce Italian daily takes no public money, few ads

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Four years ago in

September, Italian readers found a new newspaper at their local
kiosks. Its name: Il Fatto Quotidiano - The Daily Fact. Its the success
was immediate and not so unexpected. After just seven months in
May 2010 there were 45,000 subscribers by post; the sales in the
kiosks counted for 65,000 more copies. Today Il Fatto Quotidiano is
distributed in 25,000 of the 38,000 kiosks present in Italy. After just
a few months since its foundation the number of daily printed
copies was around 150,000. Furthermore, there are almost 10,000
online subscribers who download the daily PDF dedition. Why such a
great success in such a short period of time?

Small editorial team and excellent quality

New newspapers in Italy typically start with a large number of

employees. Revenues usually come from four sources: subscribers,
kiosk sales, advertising and public money. But the entire
organization of Il Fatto Quotidiano is comprised of fewer than two
dozen people. Its a tiny editorial team compared to other Italian
and European newspapers.
The editorial staff consists of some of the best Italian investigative
journalists: Marco Travaglio, Peter Gomez, Marco Lillo and Antonio
Padellaro, the executive editor of the paper. At the beginning of
2009 the social capital of Il Fatto Quotidiano started with 600,000
euro, some of it put up by the journalists and some from the
publishing house, Chiare Lettere. No major industrial group has
invested in this newspaper. Furthermore, Il Fatto Quatidiano decided
not to receive any public funds, unlike all other major Italian
newspapers.

The Italian Constitution is its only source of inspiration

Il Fatto Quotidiano serves a growing niche of readers and in so

doing has attracted a dedicated readership. It makes all possible
efforts to provide information free of prejudices and political
influences. The decision of Antonio Padellaro, the executive editor of
this newspaper, to be inspired just by the Italian constitution has
been perceived by the audience as a totally new element in the
media landscape. In Rome, this EJC correspondent asked Mr.
Padellaro about the independence of his newspaper:

We do not have owners. Well, the newspaper is owned by its

journalists. This fact gives to us a substantial independence.
The journalists of Il Fatto Quotidiano are the shareholders and
we guarantee with their professionalism the freedom of the
newspaper. We are not an ideological newspaper. We made an
agreement with our readership. We produce a newspaper that
has of course its limits but it is genuine. We will respect this
quality because it has been rewarded by the readers.

Mr. Padellaro continued: Our independence let us gain in Italy

a role of real opposition. Not a preconceived or political
opposition but a vision that is against the dominant vision in
the media. Our editorial line is based on the Italian
Constitution. It may seem rhetoric [] but we put on the suit
about the freedom of the press that is made by the article 21
of the Italian Constitution.

As a refresher, Article 21 states that All persons have the right to

express freely their ideas by word, in writing and by all other means
of communication. The press may not be subjected to authorisation
or censorship.
Advertisers have no influence on the editorial line. No
public fund is received.

<h4Pressures on Italian journalists to please the political class in

general have increased in recent years, making for poor service to
the public in terms of information of the relevant facts about the
Italian political life. Further, newspapers can be influenced by
advertisers: by car manufacturers, banks or telecommunication
companies. Their influence is typically visible in a lack of
investigation on the behavior of these companies and a weak role of
a newspaper as a watchdog.

Il Fatto Quotidiano has less dependence on advertisers as compared

to, say, Il Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica or La Stampa, the
three major Italian newspapers. In each of these titles, advertising
occupies around 40 percent of the pages. Il Fatto Quotidiano gives
10 percent of its space to advertising. So how can Il Fatto
Quotidiano be profitable?

Let put it frankly: we accept advertising by major industrial groups

but our editorial line does

not depend on it. If we have the advertising, good, otherwise we
move on in any case. We started with a small editorial team and our
economic independence is possible thanks to our readers, the sales
in the kiosks and the subscribers for the paper and on line edition,
said the vice executive editor, Marco Travaglio during a conference
at Universit Bocconi in Milan in 2010.</h4

Watch-dog attitude

An investigative approach is prominent in the editorial line of Il Fatto

Quotidiano. The staff regularly produces journalism based on
common sense, smart questions and a watch-dog attitude toward
the behavior of politicians and corporations. There is a sense of the
right to report, critique and reply. The paper tries to serve as a
watchdog in the interest of the readers, taking not just a
scandalistic approach but an attempt to protect of the dignity of the
citizenship against the abuses of any kind of power and misuse of
public funds. The newspaper is written for the readers, which is not
an obvious quality. No kind of reverence is extended to the political
class.

The online demand for objective information

Marco Travaglio has a video section called Passaparola (Word of

Mouth) on Beppe Grillos blog www.beppegrillo.it which has 175,000
unique daily users. Grillo, the comedian who founded Il Movimento
5 Stelle (The Five Stars Movement), runs one of the most visited
news websites in Italy. Travaglio noticed the demand for Italian-
language information free from the influence of the countrys
political parties. There is interest in news stories based on facts and
not on the desire of applauding the political class. Giving visibility to
facts often buried on back pages provoked more than 500,000
contacts to many videos of Marco Travaglio. He summarized the
processes of Mr. Berlusconi and talked about other current scandals
that were missing on the major national media. Il Fatto Quotidiano
has its own website with an average of 700,000 unique users each
day, or 9 million UUPM (unique users per month source: Nielsen
Sitecensus).

An alternative to television and other newspapers

Only Il Fatto Quotidiano, Libero and Il Giornale open with a front

page whose content diverges from that of other national
newspapers. Il Fatto Quotidiano is a case study especially peculiar
to contemporary Italy. The key element of success has been not to
repeat the rundown of last nights television news when so many
dailies do so. Il Fatto Quotidiano rather uses its front to present
news not covered on TV in a different order of priority and with
more depth.

Filling a void in the Italian media landscape

The state of the press in Italy is not brilliant: journalists in general
are under the influence of advertisers and of the owners of the
newspapers, most of which are not disinterested publishers. They
are usually investors with interests in many other fields. A majority
of the media prefer not to put under scrutiny topics that may
concern their ownership. When the owner is a major political leader,
then the priority of the news is obviously biased and the quality of
journalism is compromised on a vast scale, even though the
freedom of the Italian press is guaranteed by law.

Il Fatto Quotidiano was founded during a moment of Italian history

in which its Parliament produced laws to protect the prime minister
from its criminal proceedings and protected his economic interests.
So it seems natural for a newspaper whose only source of
inspiration is the democratic constitution to find an eager
readership.

Today, after three years of its launch, Il Fatto Quotidiano has grown
to include an economic section and a cultural insert called Saturno
and the number of journalists has increased. In any case, after the
initial boom the number of daily sold copies decreased from 75,000
in 2011 to reach the constant readership of 57,000 in 2013. The
printed copies are stable at 110,000.

Lets hope that this success will continue.

Tags: watchdog, sales, politics, newsstands, newspapers, kiosks,

italy, italian, investigative, government,
Published on 18 June 2013
About the author:

Michele Caracciolo di Brienza

Michele Caracciolo di Brienza is an expert on media relations based
in Geneva. Previously he collaborated with the Milanese editorial
headquarters of Agence France Presse. He currently contributes to
La Stampa and Il Giornale and he is the editor of the column
dedicated to foreign policy for La Rivista, an Italian-language
magazine monthly distributed in Switzerland.