Television remains the main source of news for the bulk of the Italian population. Public broadcaster RAI’s news bulletins (TG) are still popular, while all-news TV channels (SKY Tg24, TgCom, RaiNews24) are building a reputation for trusted news.¹

The Italian press is highly regionalised, reflecting the country’s history and character. With almost half of the population (47%) never reading a newspaper,² print readership figures continue to be very low compared to other European countries.

The online offer is more diverse, with legacy media outlets such as La Repubblica (29%) performing strongly and digital-born players still fighting to find an adequate audience and sustainable business models. With mobile internet booming in Italy, media habits are changing fast. Many news websites are slightly decreasing in popularity, while more people use social media and mobile apps to access and share news.

Newspaper readership is continuing to decline and for the most part digital subscriptions are not balancing out the loss of print copies. Several national papers have shut down (including the eminent L’Unità, launched in 1924 by Antonio Gramsci) and newsrooms have continued to shrink: in the last 10 years, daily papers have lost around 30% of their journalistic workforce.³

Despite these problems, paywalls are still not common in Italian online media outlets which continue to rely on free news subsidised by advertising. Native advertising formats have been introduced on most sites, but often with no clear policies to distinguish them from editorial content.

The popularity of WhatsApp is growing year by year in Italy, but media outlets are still reluctant to use this channel as a distribution platform – with the exception of La Repubblica’s newly launched breaking news service (January 2015). According to recent data, the amount of news shared online continues to grow.⁴ In the vast majority of cases this happens through Facebook, while Twitter and Google+ continue to play a marginal role.

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