ROME: L’Unita, the left-wing daily founded by Antonio Gramsci, one of the fathers of Italian communism, will suspend publication from Friday after its shareholders failed to reach agreement on future strategy, the newspaper said.
“They have killed L’Unita,” the paper headlined its front page yesterday. Apart from three pages devoted to the closure and a one-page advertisement for its e-bookstore, the remainder of the 20-page edition was left blank.
L’Unita, founded by Gramsci in 1924 as the official organ of the Italian Communist Party, survived the fascist era as an underground newspaper but it has struggled since the collapse of the party in the 1990s, closing briefly in 2000 before reopening with new private shareholders. Like the rest of the media sector, it has also been hit by the transformation of the industry.
REUTERS
