il Fatto Quotidiano (English: "The Daily Fact") is an Italian daily newspaper owned by Editoriale Il Fatto SpA published in Rome, Italy. It was founded on 23 September 2009 and was edited by Antonio Padellaro until 2015, when Marco Travaglio became the editor.[1][2]
History
Late within 2008, Marco Travaglio was asked by fellow journalist Massimo Fini to advertise the latter's newly founded magazine, La Voce del Ribelle ("The Rebel's Voice"), on the former's blog, voglioscendere.it, with the objective of gathering "a few hundred subscriptions". Thousands of people answered, allowing Fini's magazine to succeed.[3]
Because of this success, Travaglio started considering the idea of using his blog to launch a new newspaper, independent from public funding.[3]
The intention of publishing a new national newspaper was announced by Marco Travaglio on his blog, voglioscendere.it on 1 June 2009.[4] The title il Fatto Quotidiano ("The Daily Fact") was chosen as a homage to journalist Enzo Biagi,[4] who was purged from state television RAI at prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's request, and whose hugely successful daily ten-minute prime-time news commentary on Rai Uno, named Il Fatto, was removed from programming. The newspaper could not just be named "Il Fatto" because RAI, the Italian public broadcast vetoed it mentioning name ownership, even if its very management was the one who put it off the air.
In June 2009, l'Antefatto,[5] a promotional website, was set up containing information about subscription and the development of the project.[4]
The publisher stated he would not use the Italian state advertising and funding to run the newspaper but instead he would use only money from sales and market advertisements.[4]
The first issue, printed in 100,000 copies in addition to 32,000 subscriptions, was already sold out before 8:00 AM on 23 September, even though distribution was limited to the largest cities. As a consequence, the newspaper announced it would immediately double the number of copies and publish the first issue, free of charge, on the Internet.[6][7]
Ownership
il Fatto Quotidiano is published by Editoriale Il Fatto S.p.A., an Italian company. The company regulation states that up to 70% of the shares can be owned by entrepreneurs, but no one of them can own more than 16% of the share capital, estimated in 600,000 euros.[8] The remaining 30% of the shares is owned by the newspaper columnists.[8] Therefore, no important choice can be made without the consent of the columnists as a 70% majority + 1 is needed to carry out decisions about the newspaper policy or editor election.[8] The managing director is Giorgio Poidomani.
