Maurizio Molinari (born 28 October 1964 in Rome, Italy) is an Italian journalist, as of April 2020 editor-in-chief of the daily la Repubblica , after serving five years as editor-in-chief of la La Stampa.
Molinari graduated in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in political science from La Sapienza University in Rome, and, in 1993, with a degree in history from the same university. He also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and at Manchester College, Oxford in the United Kingdom.
At the same time, in 1984, he starts working as a journalist for La Voce Repubblicana, the newspaper of the Italian Republican Party, and achieves professional journalist status in 1989. [1]
Molinari lives between New York City and Turin. He is married since 1994 with Micol Braha. They have four children.
Molinari arrived at La Stampa in 1997, and for over a decade he worked as a correspondent, first from Brussels, then from New York City, and since 2014 from Jerusalem and Ramallah, before returning to Turin as editor-in-chief in 2016.
Molinari also writes for several Italian newspapers and news magazines, including La Voce Repubblicana , Il Tempo , L'Indipendente , L'Opinione , Il Foglio , and Panorama .
Journalist since 1989 he covered the conflicts in the Balkans, Middle East and Horn of Africa. Among the leaders he interviewed, there are the US presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama, the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki moon, Libyan colonel Qaddafi, Saudi king Abdallah, Israeli prime ministers Netanyahu and Peres, Israeli president Rivlin, PLO chairman Arafat, Palestinian president Abbas, the Pkk commander Ocalan, the Iraqi Kurdish president Barazani and the Turkish president Erdogan.
Molinari is a regular guest commentator on Italian TV, including on La7, Rainews24, TgCom and SkyTg24. He has occasionally been a panelist on CNN, CBS and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer , aired on the Public Broadcasting Service.[ citation needed ]
His main reference points are deemed to be Foreign Affairs, Publishing Industry and the History.
Between 2000 and 2022 Molinari has been a prolific essayist, publishing an average of one book per year. Molinari is the author of 21 non-fiction books, all published in Italian: The Jews in Italy: A Problem of Identity (1870-1938) (published by La Giuntina in 1991), The Left and Jews in Italy (1967-1993) (Corbaccio, 1995), The National Interest (Laterza, 2000), Between White House and Botteghe Oscure: Interview with Lamberto Dini (Guerini and Ass, 2001), Wall Street in the Third Millennium (Fondazione Liberal), 2003, No Global? (Laterza, 2003), George W. Bush and the American Mission (Laterza, 2004), Italy Seen by the CIA (1948-2004) (Laterza, 2005), The Jews of New York (Laterza, 2007), Democratic Cowboys (Einaudi 2008), Obama's Country (Laterza, 2009), The Italians of New York (Laterza, 2011), Shadow Government (Rizzoli, 2012), The Eagle and the Butterfly (Rizzoli, 2013), The Caliphate of Terror (Rizzoli, 2015), Jihad. Attack to the West (Rizzoli, 2015), "The Return of the Tribes" (Rizzoli 2016), Duel in the Ghetto (Rizzoli, 2017), "Why It Did Happen Here" (Nave di Teseo, 2018), "The West under Assault" (Nave di Teseo, 2019), "Atlas of a Changing World" (Rizzoli, 2020), "The battlefield" (Nave di Teseo, 2021), "The Return of Empires" (Rizzoli, 2022), "Mediterrean Disputed" (Rizzoli, 2023) and "The New War against Democracies" (Rizzoli, 2024).
His "The Caliphate of Terror" (2015) has been presented by Roberto Saviano as the book "we all should read".
On 26 November 2015, Molinari is nominated new editor-in-chief of the Turin daily La Stampa , replacing Mario Calabresi [ Wikidata ], who was heading to Rome to take the place of Ezio Mauro as editor-in-chief of La Repubblica . The president of EXOR, John Elkann, chooses Molinari over the deputy editor Massimo Gramellini, and flanks him with Massimo Russo (former editor of Wired Italia) as co-director. [2] In December 2017, Molinari became editorial director of GNN, the Gedi News Network that includes La Stampa, Secolo XIX and the local papers of the former Finegil Group. On 23 April 2020, he became editor-in-chief of la Repubblica .
On 17 July 2021, his newspaper, la Repubblica , had the infamous " Hunt for the non-vaccinated. They are 17 million more" on its front page. [3] [4] [5] In November 2021, Molinari was attacked by Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Kremlin's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, because of a news analysis about Putin's grip on the European Union. "Russian President Vladimir Putin poses a hybrid threat", wrote Molinari, "generating parallel crises to grip the European Union in a vice". Zakharova called Molinari's analysis "a delicious absurdity". Decode39 noted that in denying accusations, the Kremlin confirms its whole line from Ukraine to natural gas. [6]
On 9 April 2024, Molinari was distrusted by the editorial staff of La Repubblica following a series of disputes. The no-confidence was motivated by Molinari's decision to eliminate 100,000 copies of the Affari&Finanza insert following an article unpopular with the newspaper's ownership and subsequently replaced, as well as a prior editorial management that saw the divestment of parts of the editorial group, an editorial line close to business and industrial interests, and pro-Israeli foreign political positions.
These actions generated discontent among journalists and readers, culminating in the no-confidence motion passed with 164 votes in favour and 55 against. [7] [8]
Maurizio Molinari was a participant of the 2017 Bilderberg Meeting, as noted in the official website of the Bilderberg group, which publishes the list of participants, [9] as well as of the 2019 [10] and 2020 WEF Annual Meeting.
Corriere della Sera is an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan with an average circulation of 246,278 copies in May 2023. First published on 5 March 1876, Corriere della Sera is one of Italy's oldest newspapers and is Italy's most read newspaper. Its masthead has remained unchanged since its first edition in 1876. It reached a circulation of over 1 million under editor and co-owner Luigi Albertini between 1900 and 1925. He was a strong opponent of socialism, clericalism, and Giovanni Giolitti, who was willing to compromise with those forces during his time as prime minister of Italy. Albertini's opposition to the Italian fascist regime forced the other co-owners to oust him in 1925.
John Philip Jacob Elkann is an Italian industrialist. In 1997, he became the chosen heir of his maternal grandfather Gianni Agnelli, following the death of Gianni's nephew Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, and since 2004 has been leading the Agnelli family, an Italian multi-industry business dynasty. The family has been compared to the US political family of the Kennedys.
la Repubblica is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper with an average circulation of 151,309 copies in May 2023. It was founded in 1976 in Rome by Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso and led by Eugenio Scalfari, Carlo Caracciolo, and Arnoldo Mondadori Editore as a leftist newspaper, which proclaimed itself a "newspaper-party". During the early years of la Repubblica, its political views and readership ranged from the reformist left to the extraparliamentary left. Into the 21st century, it is identified with centre-left politics, and was known for its anti-Berlusconism, and Silvio Berlusconi's personal scorn for the paper.
Stadio Olimpico, colloquially known as l'Olimpico, is an Italian multi-purpose sports venue located in Rome. Seating over 70,000 spectators, it is the largest sports facility in Rome and the second-largest in Italy, after Milan's San Siro. It formerly had a capacity of over 100,000 people, and was also called Stadio dei Centomila. It is owned by Sport e Salute, a government agency that manages sports venues, and its operator is the Italian National Olympic Committee.
La Stampa is an Italian daily newspaper published in Turin with an average circulation of 87,143 copies in May 2023. Distributed in Italy and other European nations, it is one of the oldest newspapers in Italy. Until the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the country underwent a nationalization process, La Stampa and Corriere della Sera were not real national daily newspapers, as their geographical area of circulation was mostly limited to Piedmont for La Stampa and Lombardy for Corriere della Sera; thus, both papers shared a readership that was linked to its place of residence and its social class, mostly from the industrialist class and financial circles. La Stampa has "historically" been Turin's newspaper of record. It is considered one of Italy's leading national newspapers alongside Corriere della Sera, la Repubblica, Il Sole 24 Ore, and Il Messaggero.
l'Unità is an Italian newspaper, founded as the official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1924. It was supportive of that party's successor parties, the Democratic Party of the Left, Democrats of the Left, and, from October 2007 until its closure in 2017, the Democratic Party.
The Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata is the leading news agency in Italy and one of the top ranking in the world. ANSA is a not-for-profit cooperative, whose members and owners are 36 leading news organizations in Italy.
Carlo Petrini, AKA "Carlìn", is an Italian activist, author, and founder of the International Slow Food Movement, and Terra Madre festivals.
Giuliano Ferrara is an Italian journalist, television presenter, and former politician. He is the founding editor of Il Foglio. Born into a communist and anti-fascist family, Ferrara took part to the student movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1973, he joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and carried out political activity within the PCI, and at the same time dedicated himself to journalism, collaborating with Corriere della Sera since 1982 with the column "Bretelle Rosse". Later in the 1980s, he joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), with which he became a member of the European Parliament (1989–1994).
Arrigo Levi was an Italian journalist, essayist, and television anchorman.
Luciano del Castillo is an Italian photographer and journalist specializing in war photography.
Eugenio Scalfari was an Italian journalist. He was editor-in-chief of L'Espresso (1963–1968), a member of Parliament in Italy's Chamber of Deputies (1968–1972), and co-founder of La Repubblica and its editor-in-chief (1976–1996). He was known for his meetings and interviews with important figures, including Pope Francis, Enrico Berlinguer, Aldo Moro, Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, and Roberto Benigni.
Sergio Staino was an Italian comics author, satirist, and film director.
Furio Colombo is an Italian journalist and politician. He is the former editor-in-chief of L'Unità.
Carlo Casalegno was an Italian journalist and writer. He was killed by a group of four terrorists belonging to the Red Brigades; he was the first journalist ever to be killed during the Years of lead.
Vittorio Gorresio was an Italian Journalist-commentator and essayist.
Giampaolo Pansa was an Italian journalist-commentator and novelist. Most of his writings were rooted in recent or contemporary history, notably with regard to the Italian Resistance and the Benito Mussolini years.
Il delitto è servito is an Italian television program of the detective game show genre, and an Italian adaptation of the British game show Cluedo, and an elaboration of the British board game of the same name that transforms participants into detectives. It was broadcast in the late evening on Canale 5 over 15 episodes from December 1992 to January 1993, and May 1993 to July 1993. The series was hosted by Maurizio Micheli. It was produced by La Italiana Produzioni.
Raffaele Nigro is an Italian writer and journalist.
Mario Orfeo is an Italian journalist, who served as the general director of RAI from 2017 to 2018 and has been editor-in-chief of la Repubblica since October 7, 2024.