Avanti! (Italian Newspaper) - The Fall

The Fall

It was to keep a certain notoriety, notably increased in the 1980s - with the analytical editorials of Bettino Craxi (which he signed with the pen name Ghino di Tacco). During the Craxi management however, the party underwent an expensive modernisation project involving billions of liras. However such project and the management of the last director Roberto Viletti left the party with debts amounting to 40 billions of liras. In 1992, the PSI was hit by a series of corruption scandals and Viletti conditioned by Bettino Craxi made sure L'Avanti! supported and defended the PSI. This behaviour showed the political nature of the newspaper which by 1993 only managed to sell 15,000 copied a day, far from the golden days of the 1980s. Viletti resigned in October 1992 been replaced by a more neutral Francesco Gozzano. The situation was however out of control since the end of 1992 with the electoral defeat of the PSI in the local elections. Avanti Translation Services In May 1993, Gozzano failed to pay the workers of the paper who in turn refused to work. The PSI, who had since 1896 financed and safeguarded the newspaper failed not only to help the latter but left L'avanti! to its catastrophic fate. In fact in August 1993, L'avanti! came to an end. A series of fund-raising events were organised but the newspaper failed to revive. The company in charge of the newspaper Nuovo Editrice L'avanti! was formally decleared bankrupt in March 1994 after the electoral defeat of the Italian Socialist Party who failed to gain a minimum of 3%. The fact that the paper was a political newspaper and the influence of the Craxi in a way contributed to its fall when the PSI was hit by heavy corruption scandals.