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Appointments wrapped up, Utopia and Comin go to Mass, the Pope against old bachelors

1 year ago babelfish

Appointments wrapped up, Utopia and Comin go to Mass, the Pope against old bachelors

Appointments, government, Meloni, Pope Francis, Carlo De Benedetti, Stefano Feltri, Linkedin, Services, Mass, Comin and more. Press review pills in the tweets of Michele Arnese, director of Startmag.

THE WALTZ OF APPOINTMENTS

PHONE SCOOP

DISPOSABLE DEBT?

IRAN RUSSIAN A LOT

BRANCHES IN DOLL

REPUBLIC OR FREE?

THE SOPHISTICATION OF LINKEDIN

FACILITIES & ODDS

THE SOLE 24 HOURS CASE

THE CASE TOMORROW

ORGE AMONG PUBLISHERS, COMMUNICATORS AND LOBBYISTS

PAPAL PAPAL THOUGHT

Tomorrow newspaper, what happened between Stefano Feltri and Carlo De Benedetti?

“I made an independent newspaper, maybe too much”. This sentence written by Stefano Feltri on his blog, after being removed as editor of the newspaper Domani, could be enough to explain the decision of the publisher Carlo De Benedetti to replace Feltri with his deputy Emiliano Fittipaldi.

Yet it does not seem that it is a question of political line that has triggered the tensions between De Benedetti and Feltri. Just think of the newspaper's recent event in Modena – with presence not only of the centre-left but also of centre-right exponents – where Feltri (still director of the newspaper) wanted to leave the editor free rein in the face-to-face meeting with Elly Schlein, the new secretary of the Pd; the face to face was not moderated by Feltri but by the political journalist of the newspaper Domani , Daniela Preziosi.

The publisher's outburst not only in the media, on the other hand, was all the more clear when the announcement was not made on the occasion of the start of the editorial adventure: soon the ownership of the newspaper will pass to a foundation, said De Benedetti, therefore cutting the initial umbilical cord with the financier. Three years after the launch of the newspaper, De Benedetti remains the absolute dominus of the company as number one of the Romed financial company which controls the publishing company del Domani .

In the editorial staff of Domani , however, it had been noted for some time that there were not comforting signals from the company. There have been important exits for non-renewed contracts with journalists or farewells of important signatures. This is the case of Selvaggia Lucarelli, who returned to Fatto Quotidiano , which Feltri had instead snatched from the newspaper directed by Marco Travaglio. But there have been less well-known cases – albeit of weight in the newspaper machine – such as that of Sonia Ricci: with a post on Facebook she announced weeks ago that since she had not been stabilized she was leaving the newspaper and taking care of the Food supplement; a critical post with the precariat. Ricci essentially preferred to go to work in the university ministry with minister Anna Maria Bernini (Forza Italia). Another journalist (Filippo Teoldi ) was also not confirmed at the end of the contract and was hired by the weekly l' Economist immediately afterwards.

The exits have not only characterized the editorial staff but also the administration of the newspaper. After a few months of work, Paolo Baronci left the general management of the company, which had been brought over by Antonio Campo Dall'Orto, chairman of the board of directors of Editoriale Domani.

In short, differences, cases and tensions that cannot be found in the press release with which the company in recent days communicated the replacement of Feltri with Emiliano Fittipaldi at the direction of Domani .

That the changeover was by no means serene and friendly is demonstrated by the fact that there was no usual editorial greeting from the outgoing director: Feltri instead wrote a long blog post with a key sentence (“I made a independent newspaper, perhaps too much") and nothing more on the matter. Perhaps because the exit has not yet been formalized in all respects and it certainly cannot be argued – as Corriere della Sera incredibly did – that Feltri has left the direction of Domani . Indeed, if he had written the farewell editorial he would in fact have legitimized an operation he had to undergo without wanting to make controversy, as he wrote hot on his blog after being defenestrated.

But not everything is clear about the story. Because if De Benedetti had really fully contested the management of the newspaper, he would not have appointed Feltri's deputy, Emiliano Fittipaldi, in place of Stefano Feltri. Just as evoking the push of the newspaper now towards digital under Fittipaldi's direction raises some questions, as Francesco Specchia did in the newspaper Libero : “Fittipaldi is a dozen years older than Feltri – respectively 49 and 37 years old -; it belongs to the old school, it will need a digital editor and a good SEO crew to take flight on the Net”. Furthermore, as Start Magazine wrote a few days ago , it was De Benedetti who wanted to focus above all on paper.

So much so that there was also a flood of supplements on the most varied topics – from geopolitics (excellent Scenari edited by Mattia Ferraresi), to food, comics, etc. – which have certainly contributed to increasing the costs of the company and it is not known how and how much the revenues.

A key to understanding was provided by the Post in the Charlie newsletter: “ Domani 's editor therefore seemed to have lost his motivation in recent months, and his hope that the newspaper could be more of a protagonist on the political scene and in public debate, rather than wanting to increase the investments necessary for a relaunch of the project (relaunch, especially on digital, whose economic results would all have to be verified) and set aside other hypotheses (request for public funding, entry of new partners), he asked that the losses be reduced through a reduction in costs, which has been making itself felt in the construction of the newspaper for some time. Director Feltri's unwillingness to make further savings and the publisher's conviction that a change was necessary led to the appointment of Fittipaldi”.

The corporate accounts, however, leave no room for doubt: if one scrolls through the 2021 budget at a loss, the last filed by the publishing company of the Domani newspaper, the costs were 7.2 million euros, compared to a total value of the production of 4.5 million euros.

Is the poor economic viability of the project the responsibility of management or administration?

Certainly publishers are able to serve corporate interests better than directors.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/nomine-messa-utopia-comin-debenedetti-feltri-papa-zitelloni/ on Thu, 13 Apr 2023 10:25:11 +0000.