Avanti! (Italian newspaper)

"Avanti!" ("Forward!") 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

First housed on Rome, its direction moved to Milan in 1911. While it advocated neutrality on the wake of World War I (which it viewed as an imperialist conflict), the paper was becoming infused with the militarist and irredentist attitudes of its editor at the time, future Fascist leader Benito Mussolini (who had risen to prominence as an opponent of Filippo Turati during the Italo-Turkish War). Mussolini's dissent caused his ousting from the party, "Avanti!"'s direction being taken over by Giacinto Menotti Serrati, Mussolini then started his own paper "Il Popolo d'Italia" with Syndicalist and Republican dissidents from the Socialist Party.

The paper quarters were set on fire by Mussolini's Blackshirts on April 15 1919, and it was banned by the government in 1926. From that point on, "Avanti!" was issued as a weekly, and was edited in exile – first in Paris and then in Zürich, at the Ristorante Cooperativo.

With Mussolini's first fall in 1943, the paper returned to Italy. However, its circulation was drastically curtailed due to changes in political options after World War II. After loosing its popularity, L'avanti ceased to be a respectful newspaper merely becoming a party-newspaper of the Italian Socialist Party.

The Fall

It was to keep a certain notoriety, notably increased in the 1980s - with the analytical editorials of Bettino Craxi (which he signed with the pen name "Ghino di Tacco"). During the Craxi management however, the party underwent an expensive modernisation project involving billions of liras. However such project and the management of the last director Roberto Viletti left the party with debts amounting to 40 billions of liras. In 1992, the PSI was hit by a series of corruption scandals and Viletti conditioned by Bettino Craxi made sure L'Avanti! supported and defended the PSI. This behaviour showed the political nature of the newspaper which by 1993 only managed to sell 15.000 copied a day, far from the golden days of the 80s. Viletti resigned in October 1992 been replaced by a more neutral Francesco Gozzano. The situation was however out of control since the end of 1992 with the electoral defeat of the PSI in the local elections.

In may 1993, Gozzano failed to pay the workers of the paper who in turn refused to work. The PSI, who had since 1896 financed and safeguarded the newspaper failed not only to help the latter but left L'avanti! to its catastrophic fate. In fact in august 1993, L'avanti! came to an end. A series of fund-raising events were organised but the newspaper failed to revive. The company in charge of the newpaper Nuovo Editrice L'avanti! was formally decleared bankrupt in March 1994 after the electoral defeat of the Italian Socialist Party who failed to gain a minimum of 3%. The fact that the paper was a political newspaper and the influence of the Craxi in a way contirbuted to its fall when the PSI was hit by heavy corruption scandals.

Heirs of L'Avanti!

In 1996, an American company International Press created a daily paper with the name of L'Avanti!. However, with many financial difficulties the paper closed down.

After the American attempt, in 2003 Fabrizio Cicchito and other former socialists re-constructed L'Avanti!. Although this Avanti! is formally neutral its ex-director was a close friend of another former socialist Gianni De Michelis secretary of the New Italian Socialist Party. The New PSI which is in coalition with the centre-right irrates the socialist who found home in the centre-left coalition led by the Italian Democratic Socialists create an opposing weekly paper with the name of "Avanti della Domenica" which however runs of funds and closes soon after.

In 2006, Fabio Ranucci becomes director and quickly defines the paper an independent "socialist" newspaper of information. However with the re-composition of the small often tiny socialist political formations into a new Socialist Party the paper strongly came associated with the latter.

The paper which lacks the structural and financial means of the old L'Avanti still manages to survive and like the old paper is associated with the Socialist Party although with more independence and neutrality.

Notable contributors

*Gaetano Arfé
*Fabrizio Cicchitto
*Bettino Craxi
*Antonio Gramsci
*Oddino Morgari
*Christian Rakovsky
*Filippo Turati