Italy: Gazzetta dello sport going from sports to pop

Posted by Elena Perotti on February 27, 2007 at 2:06 PM

Italian sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport is a healthy newspaper. January 2007 official data show that Gazzetta is the leading newspaper in the Italian market in terms of readership figures, with 3,603,000 daily readers. The general interest daily La Repubblica ranks second with a public of 3,015,000. Surveys also show that Gazzetta is the most read newspaper among Italians younger than 34. Since 1st February director Carlo Verdelli has scored a new record: his newspaper is the first sports daily to provide its readers with a selection of non-sport news.

No customer research was conducted before taking up this new challenge. In the words of Deputy editor Gianni Valenti the idea is to “grow even more” by conquering new shares of public. The targeted new readers are in particular women and people interested in both sport and general information news but that do not purchase more than one paper at a time.

The traditional foliation of Gazzetta has been enhanced by 2 pages, inserted as third and second to the last and entitled Altri Mondi (or Other Worlds). The column Notizie Tascabili (or Pocket News) covers 5 breaking news stories in 6/8 lines each. One current event a day is examined more in depth, through 5 very simple Q&A, which are chosen and edited in order to have all readers understand the topic’s basic elements. The rest of the Altri Mondi pages is dedicated to tabloid contents of interest for the Gazzetta’s young public: Internet, multimedia, low cost flights and the like. The last page of Gazzetta, traditionally dedicated to television, now hosts the horoscopes, which are considered as a subject of interest for women. Fashion and women’s contents are covered in a special page called Gazzalook, published in addition to Altri Mondi in the Saturday issue of the paper.

Traditional columns, letters to the editor and short sports news are also published in Altri Mondi, in an attempt to keep the attention of the regular Gazzetta reader. For the same purpose, Altri Mondi keeps the big pictures that are typical of sports papers, and the first page publishes 2 or 3 leads to the Altri Mondi contents every day.

Altri Mondi represents the first step towards the realization of a broader project that Verdelli and Valenti have in mind for the year 2008. By then, Gazzetta will adopt the tabloid format and become full color, while keeping the pink paper that has been its symbol since 1899. “Our final objective is to become a pop paper: popular, young and sparkling”, says Valenti.

Carlo Verdelli was appointed editor-in-chief of La Gazzetta dello Sport in 2006, and during his tenure the paper reached a circulation of an average 343,000 copies, gaining 1,5% over last year’s figures. He was responsible for the re-launch of Vanity Fair in the Italian market and formerly worked for a long time at the country leading daily Corriere della Sera.

Gianni Valenti became Deputy editor at Gazzetta on 1st February of this year, after stepping down as central chief-editor of Corriere della Sera. He was responsible for the project of Corriere going full color, and last fall launched Anteprima, the evening free version of the paper.