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Although Italy – or the Republic of Venice, to be precise – invented the first sheets that would become the daily newspaper we know today (as we saw in the first article in this series), it was only in the second half of the 1800s that newspapers worthy of the name truly started to spread. One paper founded in this period, the Corriere della Sera, would become one of the most important Italian dailies, bearing witness to Italy’s entire history, from its unification through to the present day.
When newspapers were not exactly daily…
In 1876, an enterprising journalist, Eugenio Torelli-Viollier, founded the Corriere della Sera in Milan. The city had already had at least eight newspapers for a dozen or so years, most notably Il Secolo, which achieved a circulation of 100,000 not long afterwards. That was Italy’s first modern newspaper, with a large editorial team, correspondents in other major cities, its own printing press and advertisements, as well as a focus on providing generalist news without any political bias.
Italy had only been unified for 15 years, and the country was racked with contrasting feelings and ideologies, often generating very strong emotions. Newspapers propagated these ideas, and – as the first true mass media (radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi was only born in 1874) – were the main tool available for spreading both news and propaganda.
Milan was flourishing when the Corriere della Sera was founded, and the paper quickly established itself as one of the most popular choices, reaching a circulation of 100,000 copies by the turn of the century (interestingly, as a result of the digital revolution, its circulation is only a little higher today).
In that period, less well organised newspapers like the Corriere were not really daily: they took two or three days to reveal a piece of news. Information that needed to be spread more quickly was printed on loose sheets of paper (which could be compared to modern day flyers) and posters, in addition to being shared by word of mouth. The news was therefore already old when people received it, meaning they tended to rapidly lose interest. But the Corriere, and its go-getting editor, Eugenio Torelli-Viollier, changed everything.
When the first king of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele II, died suddenly in 1878, Torelli-Viollier decided to dedicate news to the deceased king for over a week, unlike the other newspapers, which moved on to other headlines after a couple of days. This extended interest and insight into the event saw the Corriere double its circulation to 5,000 copies, gaining new readers and increasing public attention, which would keep on growing until the boom in readership at the start of the next century.
Twentieth century challenges
Following various internal struggles and a managerial crisis, the new editor Luigi Albertini steered the Corriere to the number one spot in Italy in the early twentieth century, with a circulation of 150,000 copies. This number kept on growing, and by the eve of the First World War it was selling almost 400,000 copies.
The legendary Italian newspaper was openly inspired by a British newspaper, the Times, including the historic building at number 28 Via Solferino, Milan, which still houses the Corriere to this day, and once also contained the paper’s printing press.
The Corriere della Sera remained liberal/conservative in its leanings, and came to represent the northern Italian upper middle classes. During the 20 difficult years of Fascism, the Corriere unhesitatingly acted as a mouthpiece for the regime, to the extent that historians now describe it as having been Fascistised. After the war, the Corriere returned to the political position it had held in the early years of the century, and once more became the top-selling Italian daily newspaper.
There is no doubt that Italy’s historical and political turmoil affected it more than any other paper.
The most authoritative Italian paper
The leading intellectuals of the time all wrote columns for the Corriere.These included philosopher Benedetto Croce, dramatist Luigi Pirandello and the poets Massimo Bontempelli and Gabriele D’Annunzio, followed later by names like philosopher and politician Giovanni Gentile, journalists Corrado Alvaro and Giovanni Papini and Nobel Prize-winning author Eugenio Montale. The paper’s tradition of including Italy’s great intellectuals was also one of its strong points after the war: it beefed up its page 3 – dedicated to culture – significantly, featuring editorials and articles from screenwriter and playwright Ennio Flaiano, director Pier Paolo Pasolini, novelist Alberto Moravia and historian and philosopher Umberto Eco, to name but a few.
Many journalists learned their trade at the Via Solferino offices before making a name for themselves among the Italian intellectual and literary elite, including Dino Buzzati – who joined the paper aged 21 – and Indro Montanelli. Other big journalistic names hired included Enzo Biagi, Giampaolo Pansa, Giovanni Spadolini and many more.
Solid and simple graphics
The Corriere, as tradition dictated, had a broadsheet format, since, as we have seen in our previous articles, large paper sizes were always seen as synonymous with authoritativeness. This all changed in the early years of the new millennium, however, when the Times and the Independent, another British newspaper, adopted a smaller tabloid format and opened the way for other European newspapers to do the same thing, including Die Welt and then, in 2008, the Corriere.
Numerous studies have shown that the change of format, as well as obviously saving on the amount of paper used, also makes the newspaper easier to handle (leafing through and folding a broadsheet required some skill, and was particularly challenging for infrequent readers). In addition, from a graphics perspective, a tabloid format allows photos to be used to greater visual effect. The Times increased its circulation from 500,000 copies to 800,000 after going tabloid (source: New York Times).
In terms of its graphics, the Corriere has always followed a classic newspaper style, with text taking precedence over images on the front page, at least for most of its history, taking full advantage of the nine columns of its broadsheet format. In the early 1990s, a satirical cartoon by Emilio Giannelli started to appear on the front page, an idea stolen from La Repubblica, where Giorgio Forattini had made political cartoons a genuinely edgy and provocative way of displaying the news.
The font used throughout almost the entire twentieth century at the Corriere was a little-known typeface called Barnum: a well-designed slab font created by one of Italy’s leading type foundries, Nebiolo. In 2007 and 2008, following a redesign carried out by the Leftloft studio, two new fonts were designed from scratch: Solferino for the articles, later also used for titles, and Brera, a bold sans serif font with a solid and monumental body, which gave the main headline on the front page even more impact.
The Corriere logo, which has always been slanted and displayed in the header, was created using a Clarendon font (or similar), a late-nineteenth-century slab font that, when paired with Nebiolo, gave the newspaper an art deco look. Over the years it was altered to make it more compact and easier to use as a logotype.
In recent decades, following the introduction of colour printing, boxes and coloured borders have been added to the layout, but this has always been done subtly, so as never to dominate the newspaper’s overall appearance.
Another stand-out feature of the newspaper is the way it always prioritises readability and clarity. With this in mind, in 2017 it decided to increase the font size of its articles from 9.7 to 10.2 pt, with the line spacing also increased proportionally. We reckon this may have been done in part for the benefit of older readers, many of whom have vision problems or at least no longer enjoy 20/20 vision!
The digital revolution and many open questions
In the 1990s, the Corriere endured a slump in sales, due in part to the exponential growth of its most direct competitor, La Repubblica, and it had to find a way to recover. It was in this period that one of the paper’s institutions – its page 3 dedicated to culture – was abolished, following the example of other European newspapers, which divided the news up into sections of multiple pages. It is worth noting, however, that the Corriere still produces one of Italy’s best cultural supplements, La Lettura.
It faces the same challenge every other newspaper in the world: fighting the unstoppable rise of digital. it also need to find a stable political or philosophical viewpoint among the Italian reading public to adhere to, and attract younger readers.
These challenges remain, but the Corriere della Sera, thanks in part to its website, which is read by over 9 million people (according to Wikipedia), is more vibrant than ever.
Image and information sources
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corriere_della_Sera
https://www.ilpost.it/2011/06/15/nuovi-font-corriere-sera-brera-solferino/corriere5
https://www.ilpost.it/2014/09/24/nuovo-corriere-della-sera
https://tg24.sky.it/cronaca/2024/02/17/prime-pagine-quotidiani-oggi-17-febbraio