Marco Travaglio

Marco Travaglio (Torino, 1964) is an Italian journalist and essayist, editor-in-chief of «Il Fatto Quotidiano» since 2015. A graduate in contemporary history, he began as a freelance contributor to various publications; in 1987 his meeting with Indro Montanelli brought him to «il Giornale», and from there he specialised in judicial reporting, with investigations into political corruption and the ties between the mafia and the State.^[1] His publishers' notes describe him as the author of many bestsellers.^[2]

Montanelli's pupil

After «il Giornale», Travaglio followed Montanelli to «la Voce» as well;^[2] in the following years he wrote for «Il Messaggero», «Il Giorno», «la Repubblica» and «L'Espresso».^[1] His publishers' biographical notes add to the list «l'Indipendente», the satirical weekly «Cuore», «il Borghese» and «l'Unità».^[2]

Montanelli remained his acknowledged point of reference. In July 2021 Travaglio edited for Rizzoli Indro: il 900, a three-hundred-page selection of the master's articles and editorials.^[3] In the introduction he recounts an afternoon spent watching him from the corridor, through the half-open door, as he typed out the day's piece on his Olivetti typewriter:

«I spy on him through the gap for half an hour or so while he writes his editorial on the Olivetti Lettera 32. And I witness the miracle that repeats itself every day: it's like a praying mantis in a trance, head bent over the keyboard, nose almost buried in the sheet advancing on the roller, the two index fingers tapping away without pause as if on piano keys, to a musical rhythm»

The book, he writes, is intended above all for those who could not read Montanelli himself, «for reasons of age».^[3]

Il Fatto Quotidiano

The publishing company behind «il Fatto», SEIF, was set up in April 2009 on the initiative of Antonio Padellaro, with the aim of launching a newspaper. The project became known online in the summer of that year, through the blog Antefatto.it and communities on Facebook and Twitter, and issue No. 1 hit newsstands on 23 September 2009 with 40,000 subscriptions already secured.^[4] Travaglio, who took part in the venture from the outset and is among its shareholders, became deputy editor in the autumn of 2010 and editor-in-chief in February 2015.^[4][2] Under his editorship, in November 2016, the publisher and the editorial staff left the Prati district for new offices in the Celio district of Rome; the company went on to launch the publishing house Paper First (2016), the television production company Loft, and the monthly magazine «FQ Millennium», edited by Peter Gomez (both in 2017).^[4]

The relationship with readers is part of the newspaper's identity. In his 2019 Christmas message Travaglio wrote that without their participation the paper would never have made it, and invited them to swell the ranks of the «Club degli Apoti», recalling a phrase coined by Giuseppe Prezzolini for those who «don't swallow it».^[5] In 2026 he received the Flaiano Prize for journalism.^[1]

Books and television

Alongside his work in the newsroom, Travaglio has published numerous books, often co-written with colleagues. Among his best-sellers are Il manuale del perfetto impunito (2000), L'odore dei soldi with Elio Veltri (Editori Riuniti, 2001), Mani Pulite with Gianni Barbacetto and Peter Gomez (2002), La scomparsa dei fatti (il Saggiatore, 2006) and È Stato la mafia (Chiarelettere, 2014).^[6][2] With Paper First he has published, among others, Perché NO with Silvia Truzzi (2016), B. come Basta! and Padrini fondatori, the latter with Marco Lillo (2018), Bugiardi senza gloria (2020), I segreti del Conticidio (2021) and Israele e i palestinesi in poche parole (2023).^[2][6] More recently he has published Mani pulite. La vera storia (2022), Scemi di guerra, Il santo and Ucraina, Russia e Nato in poche parole (2024).^[1]

On television his name is linked to that of Michele Santoro: Annozero on Rai, Comizi d'amore (2011) and Servizio pubblico on La7 from 2012.^[1] The partnership also had moments of friction: in October 2014, during an episode of Servizio pubblico, Santoro interrupted him while he was pressing Liguria Region president Claudio Burlando, and Travaglio walked off the set.^[7]

The Turin-Lyon line and Appendino's Turin

Among the newspaper's campaigns has been its opposition to the Torino-Lione high-speed railway line. On 4 November 2018, after the vote with which the Five Star administration of the City had come out in favour of halting the works, «il Fatto» ran the front-page headline «Sì Tav, la marcia dei 4 gatti» («Pro-Tav, the march of the handful»), claiming that only a few hundred people, not the 40,000 announced, had gathered in Piazza Castello to protest against mayor Chiara Appendino.^[8] On 8 March 2019 the paper headlined its coverage of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte's press conference with «Decido io, il Tav è inutile» («I decide, the Tav is useless»), accompanied by a Travaglio editorial titled «Giocondo e Pantalone».^[9]

By the end of 2019 Travaglio himself counted the battle among those lost, at least for the time being: the fight «to block large, useless, costly and polluting projects like the Torino-Lione Tav», which in his view contradicted the unanimous tribute paid by politicians and newspapers alike to Greta Thunberg and the Fridays For Future movement.^[5]

Politics and lawsuits

In September 2019, on the eve of the vote by Movimento 5 Stelle members on the Rousseau platform, Travaglio listed in an editorial ten reasons to vote in favour of the alliance with the Partito Democratico that would give rise to the Conte II government, arguing that the Movement had been born to challenge the PD into opposing «Berlusconi-League-ism» and that it now had to accept the PD's outstretched hand. According to «Il Post», the choice reflected the newspaper's difficulty in positioning itself after the Movement's entry into government, first with the League and then with the PD.^[10]

His work has also led to numerous civil defamation suits, with varying outcomes at different stages of judgment. On 22 October 2018 the Florence civil court, in first instance, found two comments by Travaglio and a «Fatto» headline on the Consip case defamatory towards Tiziano Renzi, father of the former prime minister, setting total damages at 95,000 euros, while rejecting the claims relating to four investigative articles.^[11] In November of the same year the same court ordered him to pay Tiziano Renzi a further 50,000 euros for a remark made on La7's Otto e mezzo in March 2017; the ruling came just days after the Rome public prosecutor's office had requested that the case against the elder Renzi in the Consip investigation be dropped.^[12][13] That conviction, upheld on appeal, was overturned and referred back by the Court of Cassation's first civil section in February 2024, on the grounds that the lower courts had failed to consider ex officio the right to criticism;^[14] in January 2026 the Florence Court of Appeal, ruling on referral, rejected Tiziano Renzi's claims, ordering him to repay what he had received and to cover costs, for a total of around 100,000 euros.^[15]

In October 2023 Matteo Renzi made public a first-instance civil ruling by the Florence court ordering Travaglio and «il Fatto» to pay him 80,000 euros, plus legal costs, over 51 articles, almost all signed by the editor.^[16][17] In January 2026 the Florence Court of Appeal overturned the ruling, classifying the articles as political criticism and satire rather than defamation: Renzi was ordered to repay the roughly 98,000 euros he had already received, with interest, and to cover the costs of both proceedings, for a total of around 225,000 euros.^[17]

Sources

1. Treccani – Enciclopedia on line
2. Garzanti
3. Rizzoli — 20 July 2021
4. SEIF – Società Editoriale Il Fatto
5. Il Fatto Quotidiano — 23 December 2019
6. Il Fatto Quotidiano
7. Il Post — 17 October 2014
8. Il Fatto Quotidiano — 4 November 2018
9. Il Fatto Quotidiano — 8 March 2019
10. Il Post — 3 September 2019
11. Il Fatto Quotidiano — 22 October 2018
12. Il Post — 16 November 2018
13. AGI — 17 November 2018
14. Il Fatto Quotidiano — 9 February 2024
15. Controradio — 28 January 2026
16. Il Post — 6 October 2023
17. Il Tirreno — 22 January 2026