l'Unita Bites the Dust

["Jay Moore" <research@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Former communist broadsheet l'Unita folds
ROME, July 28 (AFP) -

Italy's former communist daily manifesto l'Unita, terminally ill for years,
closed Friday cribbled with debts, 76 years after it first appeared.

The front page of Friday's last edition carried a facsimile of its first
front page which hit newsstands February 12, 1924.

The paper also ran four other facsimilies, including one of its March 16,
1978 issue after the kidnapping of former premier Aldo Moro by the Red
Brigades.

Its headline that day read: "The enemies of democracy will not win."

The other facsimiles were an "Addio" (farewell) to charismatic communist
party leader Enrico Berlinguer on June 13, 1984 and "The most beautiful day
for Europe" on November 11, 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The paper also reprinted its August 20, 1991 frontpage with the headline
"The end of a great dream" after the putsch against then Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev.

Closing down l'Unita, founded by Antonio Gramsci, is "a tragedy, a tragedy
for the left," said l'Unita chief editor Giuseppe Caldarola in the paper's
final editorial.

"Did this really have to happen? We are dying of debts, we are dying because
of an absurd financial crisis," he added.

L'Unita lost more than 70 billion lire (more than 36 million euros, 33
million dollars) over the past three years and the number of readers has
dropped to less than 50,000.

There were some signs Friday that the newspaper might be re-edited at a
later date, but Caldarola said if so it would be without him and many
others.

The death knell for l'Unita comes as Italy's governing left is going through
a serious crisis. Legislative elections, due by April next year, are
expected to see center-right parties return to power.

L'Unita had been the main sheet of the Democrats of Left (DS) which, since
1996, has been the principal party in the center-left alliance backing Prime
Minister Giuliano Amato, after the breakup of the old communist party (PCI)
in the early 1990s.

The PCI was the most powerful communist party in western Europe during the
cold war years but also the first to distance itself from Moscow's hardline
course, reinventing itself as a so-called euro-communist party under
Berlinguer.

But Caldarola on Friday accused the DS of having stood by in silence as the
paper entered its financial crisis.
"If the left does not go back to its roots and does not take pride in them,
the Unita case will foreshadow other tragedies," he warned.

L'Unita's 195 journalists and employees all lost their jobs.