The conversion to the Berliner format was first planned two years ago, as a reaction to the loss of credibility and declining circulation figures. The idea was to have La Stampa drop most of the national and international coverage, and concentrate on local issues of its traditional readership, located most of all in the northwest of the country.

After Anselmi stepped in as chief editor, surveys showed that the paper was gradually regaining the confidence of its readers, and circulation figures started rising again. The project of redesign could not be overruled, as the new rotary machines had already been bought, but it was revised in order to keep La Stampa a national newspaper. The decision was to mantain the traditional double focus on international and local news “with the ambition of becoming stronger (…) where we are already strong”, said John Elkann to Prima Comunicazione.

The graphic project did not change: Berliner format, full colour and larger font. As for the content, the sections of  the paper stay the same, but the foliation  nearly doubled: the Sunday 19th issue of  the redesigned paper had 96 pages, while the copy published the Sunday before had 55. In particular, the internal politics section passed from 6 to 10 pages, the international coverage from 2 to 5 .

In an effort to provide the reader with different points of view, the most important stories are commented with extensive interviews to dissenting protagonists. Boxes, charts, drawings and  summaries explain the backgrounds of the news and the most important contents of the articles. The new La Stampa keeps its traditional focus on the coverage of the 12 provinces of North West Italy, with a paper whose regional section changes according to where the copy is sold. The local section is at the end of the paper as it always was, but it is broader, and includes pages dedicated to the main cities of the province and their neighbourhood. As for advertisements, the redesigned Sunday issue had 24 full-page ads, doubling those of the week before.

On the same day of the publication of the new paper, the website lastampa.it was renewed too, with the introduction of multimedia content and sections aiming to stimulate the contact with readers, such as blogs and forums.

La Stampa has a circulation of about 307.000 copies. The figure of Il Corriere della Sera, that ranks first among Italian newspapers, is 685,000. 

Source: La Stampa (in Italian), Prima Comunicazione (in Italian)