In Italy, the rule has long been that, without the support of a political party and a major industrial group, the life of a newspaper will be nasty, brutish, and short. L'Indipendente tried to buck that tradition, and failed. In the finest tradition of Italian ambiguity, however, it is difficult to know whether to mourn, or celebrate, that failure.

L'Indipendente began publication in November 1991, with a start-up investment of $ 30 million from a group of northern Italian investors led by investment banker Guido Roberto Vitale (the brother of Alberto Vitale, c.e.o. of Random House). It was led by well-meaning Italian journalists who wanted an objective, English-style publication.

"The idea was to found a quality newspaper, which Italy does not really have," says founding editor-in-chief and shareholder Ricardo Franco Levi. "In Italy, newspapers are aimed simultaneously at university professors and taxi drivers. We wanted to split that target, and we also wanted to separate news from opinion, something not usually done in Italy. And we wanted to be rigorously independent, as the masthead suggested."

Within three months, however, Levi had been relieved of his duties by mutinous investors, and the newspaper quickly metamorphosed into yet another fire-breathing, ideological, and partyoriented newspaper.

All of this happened during a time of unprecedented change in Italy. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the U.S.S.R. upset a complex but stable network of political and economic alliances in the nation, where the Western bloc's largest freely elected Communist party had been perpetually held at bay by complicated alliances led by the dominant, pro-church Christian Democrats and the smaller, pro-U.S. Socialists. Newspapers and industrial groups fit into that array of alliances and pacts.

When the Soviet empire broke up, the Italian Communist party did too. Meanwhile, the largest corruption scandal in postwar Western Europe erupted, and in its wake a new political party burst onto the stage -- the Northern League, dedicated to freeing the "productive north" from the "parasitic south" of Italy. The league supports the idea of replacing the Italian state with three federated regions; it opposes immigration, crusades against corruption, and is generally seen as a more or less articulate howl of populist rage from a long-misgoverned nation. It has worrisome overtones, with some of its extremists accused of racism and anti-Semitism. The party's charismatic leader, Umberto Bossi, recently said that the earth is divided into the civilized world and the uncivilized Muslims.

What seems to have happened to L'Indipendente during this turbulent period is that after a brief and unrewarding experiment in truly independent -- if uninspired -- journalism, it fell back on the standard Italian formula of support from a political party -- the Northern League. The paper's major campaign, like the league's, has been one of strong support for the government magistrates who are leading Italy's corruption probes. While avoiding the excesses of the league's xenophobia, L'Indipendente has criticized the government's failure to effectively regulate immigration.

In former editor Levi's eyes, L'Indipendente made a cynically opportunistic alliance with the new political party and with an Italian financial and broadcasting powerhouse. "The shareholders took fright at the most difficult moment." he says, recalling the rapid decline in circulation, from an initial high of almost 200,000 to what Levi says was about 30,000, and what others estimate as being as low as 15,000 by February 1992. "They decided to move in the direction of the league, to establish an alliance at the moment of the league's greatest success.

"And there are rumors, which I believe are well-founded," Levi continues, "that there is explicit support from the television networks of Silvio Berlusconi." Berlusconi is Italy's leading broadcaster -- Italy's only broadcaster, aside from the state -- with four networks.

Others, however, say that Levi himself must bear some blame for what came to pass, and for the arrival of Vittorio Feltri, an editor with a reputation for saving dying publications and a knack for making valuable political alliances while remaining beholden to no one. "Levi was a nice person, but no leader," says L'Indipendente's first arts editor, Marco Ausenda. "After three days, no one read the paper anymore. Then they called Vittorio Feltri, and in six months he had turned it into the mouthpiece of the northern movement, and raised circulation to 100,000."

"Levi produced a sterile paper, with no gossip," says Alessandra Ravetta, editor and owner of Prima Comunicazione, the monthly of the Italian publishing trade. "In the end, the paper became so independent it had no identity. Then Feltri came in, and he was a different sort of person. He is a force of nature, very bright, and he just happens to be crusading on the same wavelength as the league."

Vitale, who represents the paper's investors, is happy with the way things have gone. "We chose Feltri to protect the investments of my clients." he says. "Levi's paper appealed to maybe twenty-five hundred people in Italy. I now have some hopes of seeing a return on my investment." Vitale expects to come close to breaking even by the end of the year.

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