Repubblica and Stampa, a (bad) balance sheet of the Elkann-Gedi management
What happens to the newspapers Repubblica and Stampa of the Gedi group. The deepening of Andrea Garibaldi for Professione Reporter
It happened exactly three years ago.
John Elkann's Exor buys the Gedi Group from Cir of the De Benedetti brothers. Gedi has la Repubblica , La Stampa and L'Espresso in his stomach. With Elkann, Agnelli heir, La Stampa , sold three years earlier, returns home. Repubblica and Espresso almost returned home, given the kinship between Carlo Caracciolo and the forty-year-old John.
It was December 2019. In April 2020, in the midst of the "Covid storm", Elkann appointed two new directors, Maurizio Molinari at Repubblica and Massimo Giannini at La Stampa . Molinari also becomes editorial director of the Group, he is given the keys to transformation. At that time , Repubblica sold (print plus digital) 188,600 copies a day, La Stampa 118,200. As of April 2022, Repubblica is at 142,100 and La Stampa at 98,200. Taking even more recent data, those of September 2022, we find La Repubblica at 137,130, minus 12.8 percent on the same month of 2021 and La Stampa at 97,000, minus 8.8 percent on 2021. The loss on September 2019 is 31.5 percent ( Republic ) and 27 percent ( La Stampa ).
A DOT AWAY
To say, Il Corriere della Sera sold, last September, 262,900 copies a day, with a 3.4 increase compared to 2021. In 1986 Repubblica surpassed the Corriere in sales, climbed to the highest podium, today Il Corriere sells one hundred and twenty-six thousand copies more. It's on the run, a speck away.
Numbers, you know, aren't everything. A newspaper also has a community of readers around it, a spirit, an identity. And both titles, three years later, seem a bit lost. Repubblica is a newspaper with the imprinting of Scalfari, founder and commander for twenty years, and then another twenty years with the dolphin, Ezio Mauro. So, three directors in just six years. Calabresi and Verdelli. And Molinari, who is the most alien to tradition: he has lost important signatures such as Bernardo Valli, Roberto Saviano, Federico Rampini, Gad Lerner, Enrico Deaglio, Luca Bottura, Attilio Bolzoni; it has softened shareholder secularism in Atlanticism and proximity to Israel. Now he has conducted a combative anti-right electoral campaign, but many readers – evidently – no longer recognize themselves.
FIFTH PLACE
La Stampa with Giannini has distanced itself from its Piedmont, it has become "Romanized", it has veered to the left. In Avvocato Agnelli's time it was the second major national newspaper after Il Corriere della Sera , then the third with the advent of Repubblica ; today it is fifth, surpassed by Sole 24 ore and Avvenire .
Repubblica has started a digital transformation, Digital First. According to the latest project announced by the Director, all the attention of the editorial staff will be concentrated on the online edition, to then choose in the afternoon the pieces worthy of ending up on the printed newspaper. All attention will also be focused on the contacts of each piece, to decide what to go up and what to go down in the layout. The main newspapers of the world have turned to digital, but here the results are still not arriving. Perplexity, in this context, aroused the recent sale of two branches of Gedi Digital with 65 people who dealt with video, audio, podcasts, interactive graphics, hardware and software maintenance: in theory they should have been a flagship, one of the turning points.
MIRROR OF THE TIMES
In La Stampa, Giannini's gaze is more directed towards Rome and its palaces than towards the crowned mountains of Turin. Thus, the newspaper that the lawyer held in his heart lost contact with the national newspapers, but also lost its local roots, that of Cronaca and the Provinces, the "Mirror of the Times", where readers brought their anxieties and problems. A great old man from Avvocato Agnelli's Turin says that La Stampa today looks like a paper talk show, full of TV personalities.
Molinari's position has been in the balance this fall, but he seems to have weathered the storm. In mid-November, one evening, the Director brought together the illustrious names of the newspaper, from Ezio Mauro to Concita De Gregorio, "to listen to your ideas, your suggestions". Giannini nurtures the dream of taking his place at the helm of la Repubblica , but his speech at Scalfari's funeral, full of pride for the Republic that was ("The sense of freedom that one breathed in those rooms instilled hope"), left some indelible mark.
PRICE AND FEELING
Why did Elkann embark on this editorial adventure, while – among other things – he was thinning the ties with Italy of the rest of his companies? In the meantime, to keep opponents such as Della Valle and Montezemolo at a distance from the newspapers already in the family, who with Flavio Cattaneo were interested in buying. Then, the attractive price, 102 million for the control of Gedi, which was recovered to a small extent with the sales of Espresso and five local newspapers. Then, the security that owning two important newspapers instills, a sentiment that Italian industrialists have always cultivated, to fight against attacks and justify unpopular decisions (for example, disengagement at home).
Finally, the ambition to do something great in such a delicate and suffering sector. Something “European” (John Elkann's Exor is also the majority shareholder of the English weekly The Economist ) or American, a relaunch of digital publishing, a major newspaper like Repubblica to be transformed into the Guardian or the New York Times , separate facts from opinions, authority and rigour. After three years the work is to be completed. 500,000 digital subscriptions had been announced by 2023, we are at about 100,000. Indeed, now the deal is getting complicated because Gedi's managing director, Maurizio Scanavino will also have to deal with Juventus, after the cancellation of the board of directors and the departure of John's uncle, Andrea Agnelli. Scanavino, his classmate from the Polytechnic, the only one John trusts and relies on.
The moment for Gedi (and for Juve) is topical. Raise or sell, either way. Gedi could give up Repubblica , with its over 300 editors and keep La Stampa , which is basically a family business. Danilo Iervolino, the entrepreneur from Campania who has already made L'Espresso his own, calling himself "a dreamer", dreams of also having a newspaper, but in la Repubblica – in his own words – "only rumors go around".
( Here the article published on Professione Reporter)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/repubblica-e-stampa-un-bilancio-pessimo-della-gestione-elkann-gedi/ on Sun, 11 Dec 2022 06:19:32 +0000.