Italian News Outlets

WhyGo Italy reader Federico kindly sent me this list of Italian newspapers, news magazines, and television outlets - these can be useful if you’re working on your Italian language skills or just trying to keep up with the Italian news. Grazie, Federico!

Note that the political leaning of each listing below were provided by Federico, so the descriptions may not match what you know about each news outlet. In any case, the links to each outlet will provide you with an opportunity to scout out the options for yourself. Federico put this list together while Silvio Berlusconi was prime minister (he left office in 2011 and died in 2023), so when he mentions “the government” he means Berlusconi’s.

Italian National Newspapers

Leading Dailies

• Corriere della Sera (centrist) (Milan) the most influential Italian daily, with the widest circulation in Italy (if we do not take sport papers into account). It is considered to be Italy’s daily of record. (it also has other headquarters in Rome,Naples,Bari,Florence and a number of Tuscan towns, Venice and a number of towns in the Veneto region.) It also publishes local editions (which are attached to the main newspaper) in Milan, Rome and a number of cities including Naples, Bari Florence, Siena,Pisa, Venice, Verona, Padua and Como. The local Rome edition is available in the whole Lazio Region and the Milan edition is available in the whole Lombardy Region except for the province of Como where the daily has another local edition.
• La Repubblica (center-left) (Rome) the second largest daily. It runs neck in neck with Corriere della Sera as regards both circulation and authoritativeness. (it also has other headquarters in Milan, Genua, Turin, Bologna, Florence, Naples, Bari and Palermo.) In the regions of Lombardy, Liguria, Piedmont, Emilia Romagna,Tuscany, Campania, Apullia and Sicily local editions are available, which are attached to the main newspaper.
• La Stampa (centrist) (Turin) prestigious paper. It’s the leading (and most read) national paper in the north-west of the country.
• Il Sole 24 Ore (centrist) (Milan) it’s the leading financial daily. While finance is the main focus of the paper, it is also an important publication as far as all other news is concerned.
• Avvenire (Catholic daily) (Milan) (it also has a little headquarter in Rome) it’s the leading Catholic daily in Italy and the only national Catholic newspaper (every diocese has local Catholic newspapers, most of them are weekly) All Avvenire’s journalists as well as most of the editorial staff are lay people though clergy do write on the paper sometimes. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, who ran the Vatican’s culture office from 2007 to 2022, has long written a column for the paper. Unlike many Catholic publications in the US and other countries, Avvenire deals with all kinds of news, from politics to business to current issues to sport etc. It gives though a special attention to Catholic and Church news.
• Il Messaggero (centrist) (Rome) the most read newspaper in Rome and the Lazio region.
• Il Giornale (right wing) (Milan) the leading conservative daily in Italy. For decades it belonged to Silvio Berlusconi’s family. Since 2023 the Angelucci family, which also publishes Libero and Il Tempo, has owned most of it.
• La Gazzetta dello Sport (sport daily) (Milan) it only covers sport news. It is, by far, the most read publication in Italy.

Other Dailies

• Il Giorno (centrist) (Milan) it is the most read daily in the Lombardy region. It also has a number of local editions which are attached to the newspapers and cover the local news of the various provincies of the region. Il Giorno’s local edition are based in Milan,Brescia,Bergamo,Cremona,Mantova,Lodi,Pavia,Lecco,Como and Sondrio.
• La Nazione (centrist) (Florence) it is the most read daily in Tuscany. Like Il Giorno, it features a number of local editions in Florence, Pisa, Siena, Arezzo, Prato, Massa and Lucca
• Il Resto del Carlino (centrist) (Bologna) the most read daily in the Emilia Romagna region. It has a number of local editions in various provinces, printed in Bologna, Modena, Parma, Rimini,Ravenna, Forli,Reggio Emilia
• Il Secolo XIX (centrist) (Genoa) the most read daily in the Liguria region. It features local editions in the provinces of the region, printed in Genua, La Spezia, Savona and Imperia
• Il Giornale di Sicilia (centrist) (Palermo) the most read daily in Sicily.
• Il Mattino (center-right) (Naples)it has a wide circulation in the whole of the Campania region.
• L’Unità (left wing) (Rome)
• Il Manifesto (left wing) (Rome)
• Il Fatto Quotidiano (left wing) (Rome-Milan)
• Il Riformista (center-left) (Milan)
• Libero (right wing) (Milan)
• Il Foglio (right wing) (Milan)
• Il Tempo (center-right) (Rome)
• La Sicilia (center-right) (Catania)
• Il Centro (centrist) (Pescara) it gives special emphasis to news from central Italy, in particular from Abruzzo and Molise
• Il Piccolo (centrist) (Trieste) it is the most read newspaper in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region
• Il Gazzettino Veneto (centrist) (Venice) it is the most read national publication in Venice. In the Veneto region it runs neck in neck with Verona’s L’Arena di Verona.
• L’Arena di Verona (centrist) (Verona) it gives special emphasis to Veneto news, but it also covers national news
• Milano Finanza (Milan) (financial daily)
• AffariItaliani.it (Milan)(online newspaper)
• Lettera43.it (Rome) (online newspaper)
• Il Corriere dello Sport (sport newspaper) (Rome)
• Tutto Sport (sport newspaper) (Turin)

Local Newspapers

In Italy there are also very many local newspapers (both dailies and weeklies), which only cover local news, unlike the ones I’ve listed above.

The most important are La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno (which features many editions which cover respectively Calabria news, Basilicata news, Apullia news and Campania news) Il Mattino di Padova (which only covers the news of the Padua province) and Il Tirreno (which only covers Tuscan news).

Morevoer every capoluogo di provincia, that is province capital, has at least a newspaper which covers the news of the province. The northern Lombard town of Sondrio, for instance, which counts just 25,000 inhabitants, has got one daily La provincia di Sondrio and one weekly newspaper called Centro Valle. Both cover the news from the province of Sondrio. Sondrio also has a monthly magazine, which is called In Valle. There are even towns which have newspapers which only cover the news of the town itself.

News Magazines

(The magazines listed here are all weekly news magazines. There are of course many other magazines like Vanity Fair, Focus, Le Scienze, La Settimana Enigmistica and so on and so forth but they won’t be listed.)

The main news magazines in Italy are:

• L’Espresso (center-left) (Rome, Milan)very influential magazine It has a wide circulation
• Panorama (center-right) (Milan, Rome) it belonged to Berlusconi’s Mondadori group until 2018, when the publisher of the daily La Verità bought it
• Famiglia Cristiana (Alba,Milan)(catholic) it is the most read news magazine and one of the most read magazines in general in the country and it runs neck in neck with La Settimana enigmistica and Focus. It is very attentive to poverty and emargination as well as family issues.
• Tempi (Milan)(catholic)
• Left (Milan)(left wing)

News on TV

Note: “TG” in Italian means “news on TV:” it stands for telegiornale which literally means tv-newspaper. It’s interesting that the same pun on words exists in Spanish where the news on TV is called Telediario (diario meaning newspaper).

• RAI Rai is the state broadcaster and it has many news outlets, including three different TG on the three RAI’s main channels; every of them has its own studios, and its owns journalists,newsreader and correspondents.
  • TG1 the news on channel RAI 1 (broadcast from Rome)
  • TG2 the news on channel RAI 2 (broadcast from Rome)
  • TG3 the news on channel RAI 3 (it is very attentive to social problems and while it was founded by the communist party in the 70s, as the very RAI 3 channel, it is still leftist, even though not communist any longer.) (broadcast from Rome)
• RAI NEWS 24 is the RAI all news channel. Like RAI 3, it is often accused to be a leftist channel. (broadcast from Rome)

On the other hand TG1 on the first channel was accused by many at the time of being too lenient with Berlusconi’s government.

On Parla con me, a popular late-night RAI 3 show that ran until 2011, a comedian often mocked the then-new TG1 editor, accusing him of leaving out important news.

Two leading Italian newsreaders quit their job at TG1 in 2009 because they said it was not the TG it once was.

RAI Talk Shows

While the main RAI headquartiers are in Rome (on Viale Mazzini - and that’s why RAI is often referred to as Viale Mazzini by the Italian papers - as well as in the SAXA RUBRA district, in via Teulada and in other parts of the capital) there is a large headquarter in Milan, too (on Corso Sempione), and one in Turin.

RAI 1

• Porta a porta (late evening, Monday to Thursday) broadcast from Rome

RAI 3
(the RAI 3 shows are often very critical of the government and traditionally expose social problems)

• Che tempo che fa (Fabio Fazio’s weekend talk show, which includes satire; the comedian who does the satire bit, Ms Luciana Littizzetto, is considered the most irreverent comedian on Italian TV). It moved from RAI 3 to the Nove channel in 2023.
• Tg3 linea notte (night, Monday to Friday) broadcast from Rome
• Agorà (morning, Monday to Friday) broadcast from Rome

RAI 3 investigative journalism programs

• Report (Rome)
• Presa diretta (Rome)

The RAI 3 also has headquarters in all Italian region capitals (except for L’Aquila. The Abruzzo headquarter is in Pescara). From those headquarters it broadcasts local news which is called TGR which stands for TG regione. The national TG3 news outlet is also responsible for the 20 TGR broadcast by RAI 3 simultaneously from the 20 regions of Italy.

Mediaset News

Mediaset was founded by Silvio Berlusconi, and his family still controls it through Fininvest. Its parent company is now called MFE-MediaForEurope.

• TG4 (on channel 4) its longtime editor, Emilio Fede, openly admitted to supporting Berlusconi broadcast from Milan
• TG5 (on channel 5 ) broadcast from Rome
• Studio Aperto (on channel 6) which is notoriously focused on light news such as gossip on actors and starlets broadcast from Milan

La 7 News

La 7, as well as the RAI3 channel, is very critical of the government.

• TG la 7 - TG la 7 used to have a very low audience, but that changed after Enrico Mentana (who used to work for Mediaset’s tg5) took charge of the news programme in 2010. He still runs it. Broadcast from Rome

La 7 talk shows

• Otto e mezzo (evenings, Monday to Friday, Rome)
• In onda (evenings, Saturday and Sunday,Rome) In onda is one of the very few Italian talk shows which are broadcast in the summer season. In summer, it runs Monday through Friday.

SKY Italia

SKY Italia has an all news channel called SKY TG 24 which is now considered to be Italy’s most unbiased TV news programme. It is considered by some to be the only unbiased TV news programme (since many others on the other channels are either left-leaning (RAI news, RAI 3, La 7) or sympathize for the government (especially Mediaset and RAI 1). While most SKY TG 24 programmes and news bulletins are broadcast from Rome, some are also broadcast from Milan.

TV 2000

TV 2000, formerly known as SAT 2000, is the leading Catholic channel in Italy (like EWTN in the US) and it also covers national and international news. Its news outlet is called, not surprisingly, TG 2000 (based in Rome)

Curiosity : TV 2000 has an evening programm which is unique on Italian TV, which is called TGTG. Every evening there is a different guest in the studio(often a journalist, a writer or a professor) and, together with a tv 2000 journalist they have a listen at the headlines of all Italian national news bulletins (from RAI to Mediaset to la 7 to SKY) and they compare them and give a mark according to content, originality, completeness of the information… and good Italian.

Guests in the programme are sometimes Catholic but sometimes they are not. Journalists from Avvenire, L’Espresso, La Repubblica and many others have joined this evening programm.

Local TV Stations

As is the case for newspapers, there are a number of local TV stations, some of them cover regional news (e.g TELELOMBARDIA) others are focused on the province they are based in. For instance TELE UNICA in Lecco, Lombardy covers the province of Lecco, while TELE UNICA in Sondrio covers the province of Sondrio.

There are very many local TV stations all over the boot and the islands. While they used to be available only in certain areas, many of them can be now seen all over the country.

Vatican Media

• L’osservatore Romano the Vatican’s daily newspaper, published in Vatican City. It comes out every day in Italian, with weekly editions in other languages including English and Spanish.
• Vatican Radio now part of Vatican News, it broadcasts programmes in different languages, including Italian, French, English and Spanish.

Italian RADIO News

• GR 1 on the RADIO 1 channel operated by RAI 1 (Rome-Milan)
• GR 2 on the RADIO 2 channel operated by by RAI 2 (Milan)
• GR 3 on the RADIO 3 channel operated by RAI 3 (Rome-Milan)
• Radio capital (Rome)
• Radio popolare (Milan)

Swiss-Italian Language News

• Corriere del Ticino (based in Lugano) Swiss Italian-language leading newspaper
• Tg la 1 (based in Lugano) Swiss TV news in Italian
• Tg la 2 (based in Lugano) Swiss TV news in Italian