“Making the single right-wing newspaper is bullshit. Salvini trots, Pd drugged”. Vittorio Feltri speaks

Director, is it true that you will return to direct the newspaper?

“All can be”.

Do you still like being told by Vittorio Feltri, director of the newspaper?

“I directed seven, maybe eight newspapers. I’ve lost count.”

Al Foglio, on paper, we don’t use “black and white” to separate the questions from the answers. Will we be able to make ourselves understood?

“It’s enough to be popular and have good titles. The title is very important together with the graphics”.

Do you want to preview the news of the Angeluccis’ purchase of il Giornale, the Berlusconi family newspaper?

“From what I understand the passage will be formalized in March”.

It is said that the Angeluccis, the publishers of your Libero, where you still write, also want to buy the Truth to assemble the “Fox Meloni news”. What is the point of building an editorial pole aligned in favor of the premier?

“Making a single right-wing newspaper would be bullshit”.

And you don’t run the risk of doing it?

“Newspapers die when they all have the same line. Just look at Corriere and Repubblica. The unified newspaper does not work. They serve newspapers with different lines. The Angeluccis will not create a single newspaper. They will not make this mistake.”

But why buy one more?

“They have money and they are right to spend it. That they invest it in the newspapers can only please me”.

Do you still like newspapers?

“Can I tell? They bore me. They are full of clichés, platitudes. They don’t inspire me.”

What is the first newspaper you read?

“It’s always the Corriere della Sera. I worked for many years at Corriere in the best moment of my life”.

Have they ever asked you to come back?

“They asked me.”

And why did you refuse?

“Obvious! They offered me little. The freedom of the journalist is measured by the salary. The higher it is, the freer you are. The good journalist is the well paid journalist. Freedom of the press begins with the journalist’s freedom to go eat in a restaurant, buy a decent suit. The compensation of the journalist passes from the signature and from the money”.

But you want to go back to Corriere…

“Of course I would like to go back to finish my career”.

What graphics would you like to have in a new newspaper?

“The most inviting, at the moment, is that of La Stampa. I like Massimo Giannini’s newspaper. It is the most alive”.

For the new newspaper, the name of Nicola Porro is named as director and obviously that of Alessandro Sallusti. If you were editor, who would you recommend the guide to?

“Stefano Folli would be a great conductor. They beat him up at the Corriere”.

Your fleet of signatures?

“The good Panebianco, Della Loggia, Cazzullo which is also prolific”.

What if you were editor of Repubblica?

“I would call my son Mattia Feltri to direct it and not because he is my son but because he is the best. Concita De Gregorio would also make sense. He is capable of making controversy ”.

Do you like Concita De Gregorio?

“In general, I like female journalists. They write better than men. They have a larger vocabulary.”

Do you choose your “special envoy”?

“The envoys pissed me off”.

Because?

“Just read the Italian envoys in Ukraine. I am biased, journalism is lost ”.

You have chosen to play politics and run for the Lombard regional elections with Giorgia Meloni, have you regretted it?

“On the contrary, I am delighted and continue to consider her the most capable leader. I don’t see others. Attilio Fontana will be the president, but the regional council will be dominated by FdI. Salvini is now like a horse that doesn’t gallop, but trots. I prefer not to talk about the left”.

The Democratic Party?

“It looks to me like a party of drug addicts. I mean that they seem dazed, confused. I don’t understand them and it seems to me that neither do the electorate.”

In FdI are they good at communicating?

“They’re awake, they’re not boors”.

If Berlusconi sells the newspaper, will it be his political surrender?

“It might give that impression. But everything is simpler than it is told. Il Giornale, and not only that, has losses. The Berlusconi family doesn’t want to cover those losses.”

And instead, despite everything, the newspapers continue to influence politics: the petrol case, the Nordio case with the denials by the minister and the prime minister… Weren’t they finished?

“Newspapers are read by politicians who don’t want to pass for bad politicians.”

Felt what are you reading?

“A book by Diego Fusaro. Some clever observations in a pile of crap.”

What is felting?

“I didn’t understand it either. Newspapers are not thought, they are written. It’s like love, you have to do it, only then can you understand if it was tender”.

Montanelli had left his article posthumously. And Feltri?

“One sentence. Vittorio Feltri, seriously idiot. He believed in the nonsense that he wrote ”.

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• Carmelo Caruso

• Carmelo Caruso, journalist in Palermo, Milan, Rome. He started at La Repubblica. Today he works at the Foglio