When he was born the Republic – in January 1976 – the Italian Left could count on at least four area newspapers (theUnitorgan of the Communist Party; After you!organ of the Socialist Party; the posterindependent communist newspaper; Country Eveningalways linked to the PCI) and at least three large publishing houses (Editori Riuniti, Rinascita and, above all, Feltrinelli). Rai Tre would later be added to this cultural army, founded in 1979 and immediately divided in favor of the Italian left, especially from 1987 with the season of Angelo Guglielmi as its director and Sandro Curzi as director of TG3 (remember Tele Kabul?). Beyond that, in the mid-1970s there was a true left-wing cultural hegemony with an endless plethora of “left-wing” writers, intellectuals, directors, actors and songwriters. From its inception, the newspaper founded by Eugenio Scalfari presented itself as a secular and progressive voice, an alternative to the “official versions” of the political and economic powers, be they on the left, as well as in the Christian Democracy (those were times in which the Right – as we know it – was truly residual and a minority in the Italian political landscape). In the years of lead this posture translated into an explicit defense of democratic institutions against terrorism (a position that was not at all obvious in the left of the time), combining the profile of an opinion newspaper with a strong civil vocation.

The “party newspaper” of the Second Republic

Since 1976 the Republic it is not just a newspaper, it is a real actor – one might say “a party newspaper”, due to the strength it was able to have in the following decades in influencing and, often, creating political positions and leaders – which permanently enters the Italian political scene, choosing fields, targets and priorities of the public narrative. Its identity is built through press campaigns that accompany and interpret the major fractures in the system, transforming information into a lever of pressure on power. The decisive turning point came with Tangentopoli – the three-year period 1991-1993 which caused the First Republic to explode – when the newspaper plunged its scalpel into the structural corruption of the country system and made it the key to understanding the entire passage of the era. In those seasons the Republic he follows, step by step, the judicial investigations, amplifies documents, reports, interceptions, and builds a tight narrative in which parties, leaders and currents – especially of the Christian Democrats and the Socialist Party – are measured on their contiguity with the bribe system. The collapse of the old balance is not just a fact to be told, but the ground on which the newspaper accredits itself as a moral voice of change, contributing to delegitimizing the entire ruling class that had dominated the post-World War II period. Silvio Berlusconi’s irruption into the national political scene – the poisoned fruit, in some ways, of the earthquake caused by the Milan pool – shifts the front of the conflict and opens a long season in which the Republic takes the Knight of Arcore as a target and, at the same time, as an identity countershot. From the criticism of the conflict of interests, up to the representation of “Berlusconism” as a cultural phenomenon even before a political one, the newspaper builds a continuous story that crosses governments, crises and electoral campaigns. The symbolic culmination arrives with Giuseppe D’Avanzo’s “ten questions” from 2009 on the prime minister’s private acquaintances, obsessively re-proposed on the front page as a sort of public indictment or secular mass of I’m not in it!

How the Republic built the progressive field

The Republic it was also the immaterial and material place that created, strengthened or undermined the leadership of the Italian centre-left, which often found a critical but recognizable ally in the newspaper. From the post-communist leaders to the Olive Tree season, up to the various incarnations of the Democratic Party, the newspaper has accompanied, supported, prodded the various left-wing leaders, helping to define frames and expectations around the figures who were candidates to embody an alternative to the Berlusconi bloc. Two examples, among the most recent, of how the Republic contributed decisively to creating new leaders: the famous interview on the “scrapping” of Matteo Renzi on the Republic of 29 August 2009, edited by Massimo Gramellini, entitled “The moment of scrapping”; the cover of The Express – the weekly direct emanation of the Republic – on Aboubakar Soumahoro of 17 June 2018, entitled “Men and not”inspired by the novel by Elio Vittorini, with the cover divided between the foreground, on one side, of Matteo Salvini and on the other of the – shortly thereafter – MP of Avs. Lastly, a more contained twist, was the interview with Elly Schlein on 10 June 2023 in “The Republic of Ideas” – event demonstration of the newspaper – arrived after the election as secretary of the PD, where she outlined her feminist, ecologist and anti-Meloni vision. But the newspaper founded by Scalfari has now lost its magic touch. So much so that Schlein’s leadership is far from obvious not only with respect to the entire centre-left coalition, but also within the Democratic Party itself. The Republicultimately, has tried throughout its existence to have an impact on the progressive field in the public construction of progressive leadership, which is also measured by their ability to speak to the public about «Repubblica». That famous reflective class – a sociological term coined in the 2000s to indicate a segment of the Italian urban middle classes, characterized by high education, critical awareness and progressive civil commitment – which found in the pages of the newspaper in Piazza dell’Indipendenza (the headquarters, if we want, of the golden era, from the early ’80s to 2000) and then in Largo Fochetti (from 2000 to 2010) a mirror in which to reflect – precisely – and reflect, defining oneself by subtraction compared to the model of the perfect center-left voter preached by Scalfari’s newspaper.

From the leading newspaper to social media: the end of cultural hegemony

Today, on the eve of another great political season decisive for the fate of our parliamentary Republic – see the referendum on justice and Giorgia Meloni’s attempted constitutional reform on the premiership – the Republic it is put on the market by John Elkann and it seems that there is a Greek and even Trumpian buyer on the horizon. In short, the center-left seems destined to lose its beacon. And perhaps it is also a sign of the times, where this centre-left seems to have lost its bearings, no longer being central in the political debate, no longer animated by a single voice and, more than anything, no longer moved by one single enemy – as were, for example, the tangential politicians of the Clean Hands season and then Silvio Berlusconi. The enemies seem to have multiplied and some of these are perhaps even within the centre-left. Just as the same political exponents of the progressive camp – but also of the centre-right, let it be clear – have now outsourced their political communication to social media managers (see, for example, the mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri – who has become a living reel of Instagram), who have become followers of their own followers – mostly bought at a price per kilo from India, between bots and dormant profiles – they try to imitate the younger ones on TikTok or, at most, they yearn to be hosted in the main podcasts and trending video podcasts on Spotify and YouTube. They are increasingly disinterested in having space in the printed press, so much so that the clamor for the sale of the Republic a foreign publisher seems to be more concerned about Giorgia Meloni (always eager to apply the golden shares by virtue of the Italian nature of everything) than the exponents of the Italian left themselves. Almost the Republic be it a discarded dress in the back of the wardrobe. You look at it, try in vain to remember the last time you wore it and you feel like throwing it away.