On 14 January 1997 repubblica.it was born: Ezio Mauro had recently become director of the newspaper replacing the founder, Eugenio Scalfari, and the newspaper, 21 years after its debut, was once again projecting itself into the future.
The digital breakthrough had been desired above all by Vittorio Zambardino, Ernesto Assante and Gualtiero Peirce, three journalists who had been placed in a “windowless basement” of the Roman headquarters in Piazza Indipendenza. But they didn’t care: “We were convinced, with some fanatical excesses, to be bearers of a future ”Zambardino said 10 years later. Zambardino also recalled that that January 14 Scalfari went down to the basement to greet the 3 pioneers (and “he was wearing a beige coat”) and when he came out jokingly said: “Oh well, we are unemployed”. an audio message of less than 3 minutes broadcast that day, the founder showed once again that he understood before and better than many others what was going to happen to information with the Internet.
“Repubblica takes the initiative starting today to launch a telematic newspaper on the Internet. I am tempted to say that once again we are the first newspaper to decide such a challenging innovation full of the future. But the issue we are addressing today is too demanding to leave room for propaganda slogans. In two words, the theme is this: the communication of the future it will tend to replace paper with information and television technologies. But this replacement will not be neutral. The electronic journal will have to use a new language appropriate to the medium that will serve as a support. A drier, clearer, more functional language than the one so far entrusted to paper support. We will be able to carry out this innovation of language without giving up the depth of words, the richness of the lexicon, and also that dose of eloquence which, in our opinion, constitutes an integral part of any type of written, figurative or spoken communication. This is our challenge, our challenge. And it’s the reason why we undertake this experimental phase starting today of our work. In fact, we journalists of the printed paper must train ourselves in a product with different characteristics; and we must carry out this training under the eyes of our readers by continually comparing our experimentation with their reactions, their judgments, their suggestions. Repubblica is among all the Italian newspapers the one that boasts a particularly up-to-date and modern public, already oriented in the use of information technology. The exceptional success of ours promotion on Computer No Problem goes to show it. So let’s start from a very prepared and vast launch base. The goal is to found a new type of newspaper alongside and innovating that Republic that he sent its first issue on newsstands January 14, 1976. Exactly after twenty-one years we will try again ”.
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