L'Unità
Encyclopedia

l'Unità is an Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 left-wing newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

, originally founded as official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...

.

History

L'Unità was founded by Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...

 on 12 February 1924, as the newspaper of workers and peasants, the official newspaper of Italian Communist Party
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...

 (PCI): it was printed in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

 with a circulation of 20,000 to 30,000. On 8 November 1925, publications were blocked by the Prefect of the city together with Italian Socialist Party
Italian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy founded in Genoa in 1892.Once the dominant leftist party in Italy, it was eclipsed in status by the Italian Communist Party following World War II...

's Avanti!
Avanti! (Italian newspaper)
Avanti! is an Italian daily newspaper, born as the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party, published since December 25, 1896. It took its name from its German counterpart Vorwärts.-History:...

. After the failed attempt on Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

 (31 October 1926), its publication was completely suppressed. A clandestine edition was resumed on the first day of 1927, with irregular circulation in Milan, Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, and in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. Publication was officially resumed after the Allied conquest of Rome on 6 June 1944, the new editor-in-chief being Celeste Negarville.

After the liberation from the German occupation, in 1945, new local editions were started in Milan, Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....

 and Turin, the latter edited by philosopher Ludovico Geymonat
Ludovico Geymonat
Ludovico Geymonat was an Italian Marxist philosopher, who gave an original turn to dialectical materialism....

. The newspaper's contributors included Davide Layolo, Luigi Cavallo, Ada Gobetti  Cesare Pavese
Cesare Pavese
Cesare Pavese was an Italian poet, novelist, literary critic and translator; he is widely considered among the major authors of the 20th century in his home country.- Early life and education :...

, Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...

, Alfonso Gatto
Alfonso Gatto
Alfonso Gatto was an Italian author. Along with Giuseppe Ungaretti and Eugenio Montale, he is one of the foremost Italian poets of the 20th century and a major exponent of hermetic poetry.-Biography:...

, Elio Vittorini
Elio Vittorini
Elio Vittorini was an Italian writer and novelist. He was a contemporary of Cesare Pavese and an influential voice in the modernist school of novel writing. His best-known work is the anti-fascist novel Conversations in Sicily, for which he was jailed when it was published in 1941. The first U.S...

, Aldo Tortorella and Paolo Spriano. In the same year the Festa de l'Unità
Festa de l'Unità
Festa de l'Unità is an annual social-democratic celebration in Italy, originally organised by the Italian Communist Party to finance and spread its official newspaper l'Unità , and now organised by Partito Democratico...

 was launched in most Italian cities.

In 1957 the Genoese, Milanese and Torinese editions were merged into a single edition for northern Italy
Northern Italy
Northern Italy is a wide cultural, historical and geographical definition, without any administrative usage, used to indicate the northern part of the Italian state, also referred as Settentrione or Alta Italia...

. The newspaper's editorships were unified in 1962, under Mario Alicata, who was succeeded by Maurizio Ferrara in 1966. In 1974 daily circulation of l'Unità amounted to 239,000 copies, but this number dropped considerably starting from early 1980s, mostly from the competition with the new, left-oriented, La Repubblica
La Repubblica
la Repubblica is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. Founded in 1976 in Rome by the journalist Eugenio Scalfari, as of 2008 is the second largest circulation newspaper, behind the Corriere della Sera.-Foundation:...

: the 100 million copies sold in 1981 decreased to 60 million, in 1982. In the subsequent year a document published by the newspaper, which accused the Christian Democratic
Christian Democracy (Italy)
Christian Democracy was a Christian democratic party in Italy. It was founded in 1943 as the ideological successor of the historical Italian People's Party, which had the same symbol, a crossed shield ....

 minister Vincenzo Scotti
Vincenzo Scotti
Vincenzo Scotti is an Italian politician and member of Christian Democracy . He was Minister of the Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs.-Biography:...

 of being a collaborator of the Camorra
Camorra
The Camorra is a Mafia-type criminal organization, or secret society, originating in the region of Campania and its capital Naples in Italy. It is one of the oldest and largest criminal organizations in Italy, dating to the 18th century.-Background:...

 leader Raffaele Cutolo
Raffaele Cutolo
Raffaele Cutolo is an Italian crime boss and the charismatic leader of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata , an organisation he built to renew the Camorra. Cutolo has a variety of nicknames including "'o Vangelo" , "'o Principe" , "'o Professore" and "'o Monaco"...

, which proved to be a false. The editor-in-chief Claudio Petruccioli resigned and was replaced by Emanuele Macaluso. Massimo D'Alema
Massimo D'Alema
Massimo D'Alema is an Italian politician. He is also a journalist and a former national secretary of the Democratic Party of the Left...

, the future Prime Minister of Italy
Prime minister of Italy
The Prime Minister of Italy is the head of government of the Italian Republic...

, was managing-director until July 1990.

From 1989 to 1990 the newspaper was accompanied by a satiric weekly magazine, Cuore, directed by Michele Serra
Michele Serra
Michele Serra is an Italian writer, journalist and satirist.-Biography:Serra was born in Rome, but moved to Milan in 1959. In 1975 he began to work for L'Unità, then the official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party , of which he had become a member one year before...

. In 1991 the title changed from Journal of the Italian Communist Party to Journal founded by Antonio Gramsci, with a daily circulation of circa 156,000. In 1992-1996 director was Walter Veltroni
Walter Veltroni
Walter Veltroni, Knight Grand Cross, is an Italian writer, journalist and politician, who served as the first leader of the Democratic Party within the centre-left opposition, until his resignation on 17 February 2009. He served as Mayor of Rome from 2001 to 2008.-Biography:Walter Veltroni was...

, who started periodically accompanying the newspaper with free gifts such as books and videocassette
Videocassette recorder
The videocassette recorder , is a type of electro-mechanical device that uses removable videocassettes that contain magnetic tape for recording analog audio and analog video from broadcast television so that the images and sound can be played back at a more convenient time...

s.

The newspaper ceased publication for in 2000, for nearly a year (28th July) to 2001 (28th March), because of financial troubles. Since then it has been published by Baldini & Castoldi, a company not officially linked to the Democrats of the Left
Democrats of the Left
The Democrats of the Left was a social-democratic Italian political party and part of the Olive Tree electoral coalition, which merged with a number of centrist and leftist groups to form the Democratic Party on 14 October 2007...

 (and later to its successor, the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (Italy)
The Democratic Party is a social-democratic political party in Italy, that is the second-largest in the country. The party is led by Pier Luigi Bersani, who was elected in the 2009 leadership election....

): its political position, however, continues to be strongly tied to the Democratic Party.

The average daily circulation of the newspaper was 62,000 copies.

On May 2008 Tiscali
Tiscali
Tiscali may refer to:*Tiscali, an archaeological village of Nuragici people, in Sardinia, Italy, notable because it was completely inside a huge cavern*Tiscali SpA, a telecom company based in Italy*Tiscali TV , multiple uses...

 founder and Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...

 President Renato Soru
Renato Soru
Renato Soru is an Italian entrepreneur, the founder of the internet service company Tiscali, based in Cagliari. He was born in Sanluri, Sardinia....

 finalized a deal to become the new newspaper owner. One of the first moves made by the new property was the appointment of former La Repubblica
La Repubblica
la Repubblica is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. Founded in 1976 in Rome by the journalist Eugenio Scalfari, as of 2008 is the second largest circulation newspaper, behind the Corriere della Sera.-Foundation:...

 journalist Concita De Gregorio as new editor-in-chief, replacing Antonio Padellaro.

Controversies

In recent years, L'Unità has been accused by Italian Prime Minister
Prime minister of Italy
The Prime Minister of Italy is the head of government of the Italian Republic...

 Silvio Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi , also known as Il Cavaliere – from knighthood to the Order of Merit for Labour which he received in 1977 – is an Italian politician and businessman who served three terms as Prime Minister of Italy, from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006, and 2008 to 2011. Berlusconi is also the...

 of being a politically biased newspaper, allegedly making a "criminal" use of news against him.

Notably, on 23 December 2005 Berlusconi produced in a press conference a 1953 copy of l'Unità which headlined Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

's death.

On 29 March 2006, in a personal attempt to demonstrate the factiousness of Corriere della Sera
Corriere della Sera
The Corriere della Sera is an Italian daily newspaper, published in Milan.It is among the oldest and most reputable Italian newspapers. Its main rivals are Rome's La Repubblica and Turin's La Stampa.- History :...

, a popular Italian newspaper which endorsed centre-left coalition The Union
The Union (political coalition)
The Union was an centre-left coalition of political parties in Italy. It was led by Romano Prodi, Prime Minister of Italy from April 2006 to April 2008, and former President of the European Commission.-Parties:...

 in the 2006 general election
Italian general election, 2006
In the Italian general election, 2006 for the renewal of the two Chambers of the Parliament of Italy held on April 9 and April 10, 2006 the incumbent prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, leader of the center-right House of Freedoms, was narrowly defeated by Romano Prodi, leader of the center-left The...

, he showed that both l'Unità and Corriere had the same headline that day, referring to a phrase he pronounced ("Bambini bolliti: Cina contro Berlusconi" — "Boiled children: China against Berlusconi").

External links

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