The media environment is characterised by a strong television sector, a weak and declining print sector, and growing use of the internet and smartphones for news.

Overview of key developments

By Alessio Cornia
Research Fellow, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

Television viewing in Italy ranks among the highest in Europe and TV news bulletins remain the main source of information, not least because overall internet penetration is much lower than other developed countries. ¹ In March 2016,La Repubblica and La Stampa, the latter owned by car-maker Fiat Chrysler, announced plans for a merger that will lead to the creation of Italy’s biggest publishing group.

The income of Italian traditional media (newspapers, TV, and radio) is declining significantly (-12% between 2010 and 2014), with print more dramatically affected (-30%). ² Revenues within the online sector are growing, but they still represent a minor share of overall media company revenues.

In terms of online news, most business models are based on advertising although there have been some experiments with paid content. In January 2016, leading Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera adopted a metered paywall for its online news. Other newspapers, such as La Stampa and the business news outlet Il Sole 24 Ore, have also introduced forms of premium content for specialised news and databases.

According to the 2015 AGCOM report, the contribution of the newspapers’ digital activities to their overall revenue is up from 5% in 2010 to 10% in 2014, but this growth far from offsets losses from traditional print operations.

Legacy news organisations still dominate usage online. Indeed, the websites with the widest reach are those of the main Italian newspapers La Repubblica.it, Il Corriere.it, Il Fatto Quotidiano.it,
La Stampa.it and Il Sole 24 Ore.it, the main private TV operators (the Mediaset’s TgCom24.it and SkyTg24), and the main news agency (ANSA). The public broadcaster RAI has not yet completed the transition from a broadcasting to a multichannel media company: while its TV newscasts (Tg1, Tg2, and Tg3) have the widest offline reach, its online platforms (Rainews.it and RAI.it) are marked by below par performances.

Digital-born players, such as Huffington Post Italia (12%), Fanpage (9%), and Il Post (5%), have increased their reach, but audiences are not comparable to the legacy players. Our data show that many Italians also like to use news aggregators, such as Google News (19%) and Giornali (17%) (a news app for Android devices).

Changes in media usage 2013–2016

Television news remains the most important source of news in Italy, particularly as Italy has one of the lowest internet penetration rates in Europe. Amongst online users, social media has grown rapidly as a source of news.

Paying for news

The relatively high headline rate (16%) masks the fact that just 4% have ongoing digital news subscriptions, with most of those that pay doing so through one-off purchases of single editions.

Trust

The partisanship of Italian journalism combined with political and business influence on media organisations has led to relatively low levels of trust in the news. Trust in journalists is particularly low perhaps because the most-popular Italian journalists tend to clearly express their political positions within their analysis or during their participation, as guests, in talk shows.