Birth of journalism online in Italy

The baptism of Italian journalism on the web was through the experiment of a small newspaper: "L'Unione Sarda". This is the oldest and circulated newspaper in Sardinia, founded in 1889 and was above all the first Italian and European newspaper to open the doors to publishing online, building sites made by colleagues overseas. From experiments conducted in the United States had spent nearly three years, was the end of 1994 and as we read from the presentation that on the eve of this new mode of use of news was made of the site (for further investigation http://www.ipse. com / time / unione.html) tones were enthusiastic: we saw the possibility of access to space without limits, just enough to have a phone connection. Was less then the relationship with the paper, the information was conveyed by the new medium. The enthusiasm of those who had participated in the project and the enthusiasm of the owner Niki Grauso, patron of the first major provider, "Video on-line, did not lead to expected effects. The electronic version of the newspaper did not have the success expected. The case was detected mainly in poor diffusion of the network in the reality of that time (it is estimated that in 1995 internet users in Italy was 400,000), but also in the nature of the newspaper, since its foundation in a regional newspaper and then just poorly able to itself suddenly to a national and global audience.
Between the spring and summer of 1995, other Italian newspapers (La Stampa, Il Corriere della Sera, La Gazzetta dello Sport, "The Unit") began to offer content on Internet. But their offer was very limited, did not concern the entire newspaper like L’Unione Sarda, but only little information taken from the same newspaper, and sometimes by weekly inserts. To contain costs the newspapers did not have a specific wording for the publication on line, but poured on the Web the same content of the paper product. The affirmation of journalism on the Internet was therefore a far from simple.