Scalfari, revolutionized Italy’s journalism, dead
ROME (AP) — Eugenio Scalfari, who helped revolutionize Italian journalism with the creation of La Repubblica, a liberal daily that boldly challenged Italy’s traditional newspapers, died, Thursday, at 98, the Senate president announced.
Senate President Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati led lawmakers who were debating a bill in a minute of silence to honor one of the deans of Italian journalism.
The Rome-based La Repubblica broke ground when it burst onto already crowded newsstands, in 1976, grabbing readers’ attention with punchy headlines and a tabloid format. Its sassy style of writing that had little in common with the austere prose then used by Italy’s leading paper, Corriere della Sera, headquartered in Milan.
His novel recipe proved a success, and La Repubblica became Italy’s No. 2
daily newspaper.
In Scalfari’s latter years, the journalist, a self-described atheist, filled La Repubblica with what he described as a detailed recounting of long conversations in person and by telephone with Pope Francis.
“The personality who interests me most is Pope Francis,” Scalfari said during a TV appearance. “He’s a revolutionary.”
He described himself as a “big friend of the pope.”
The pontiff learned the news “of his friend with sorrow,’’ the Vatican’s official media said. Francis “keeps affectionately the memory of
those encounters and of the heavy conversations” and was entrusting in prayer his soul to the Lord, the Vatican said.
Early on, Scalfari used the pages of La Repubblica to fight a number of battles. His was the first mainstream Italian paper to urge Italians to reevaluate Italy’s Communist party, which successive Christian Democratic-led coalitions had deftly kept out of power by allying with an array of much smaller coalition partners.
He used his weekly columns to campaign relentlessly against Silvio Berlusconi after the television mogul went into politics, in the mid-1990s,
leading a center-right bloc that would eventually form three Italian governments and make him premier. La Repubblica accused Berlusconi of jumping into politics to safeguard his business interests.
Along with his media empire, Berlusconi also had extensive real estate holdings, advertising companies and a soccer team. Conflict of interest accusations dogged him throughout his political career.
One of the first tributes following the news of Scalfari’s death nonetheless came from Berlusconi, who still heads the center-right Forza Italia party he created three decades ago.
“Eugenio Scalfari was a figure of reference for my adversaries in politics,’’ he tweeted. “Today, however, I cannot but recognize that he was a great publisher and journalist, who I always appreciated for his dedication and passion for his work.”