Fabiano Pompei’s family has run a news kiosk close to Rome’s imposing St John Lateran Basilica since 1948. Marco Volpini’s family owned one near the Trevi Fountains for a century.
Both used to be thriving businesses, but a prolonged slump in newspaper sales has forced Pompei and Volpini to pull down their metal shutters for one last time — like thousands of other kiosk owners across Italy.
“You can make sacrifices up to a certain point, but if you’re earning little or even losing money, it is better to close and do something else, even if it hurts inside,” 30-year-old Pompei said.
Photo: Reuters
Volpini had only recently taken over his tiny newsstand from his elderly father, but soon realized he could not make ends meet.
“In five years there won’t be any kiosks left. People will get all their information off phones,” he said.
The industry body Snag estimates that two-thirds of Italy’s news kiosks have closed down over the past two decades, leaving only about 12,000 in business.
The Italian Chamber of Commerce said in a report in January that in the past four years alone, 2,700 kiosks had closed, a drop of 16 percent nationwide, with Rome registering a 21 percent fall.
At the heart of the crisis lies the plunge in newspaper sales, which represent the bulk of kiosk revenues.
In 2004, about 9.54 million newspapers were sold each day in kiosks, according to data from ADS, the firm which tracks editorial sales. By 2014, that number had dropped to 2.6 million, falling again to about 950,000 by January this year.
“The decline in newspaper circulation is on a very stable downwards track. It has been going on for decades and there is no sign it will change,” said Alessio Cornia, assistant professor at Dublin City University’s School of Communications.
While editors can hope to prop up their sinking revenues by shifting readers online, the kiosk owners are having a much tougher time reinventing themselves.
Stefano di Persio runs a kiosk in the center of Rome, next to the offices of the city’s largest newspaper, Il Messaggero. He used to sell hundreds of papers each day, now he shifts fewer than 50.
“It is a joke,” he said, without laughing.
His classic, octagonal newsstand is festooned with tourist trinkets, such as fridge magnets, aprons and calendars featuring handsome priests. A handful of newspapers are tucked away for old-time locals not yet pushed out by the invading tourists.
“Most Romans have left this neighborhood and have been replaced by tourists, so we sell souvenirs. If we had to rely on newspaper sales, we would have closed long ago,” he said.
The government is this year offering incentives of up to 2,000 euros (US$2,188) to try to halt the hemorrhage, but kiosk owners said the cash would only provide a short-term balm and do nothing to solve long-term trends.
Looking to cut costs, one of Rome’s most famous newsstands, a stone’s throw from the prime minister’s office, in January turned into an automatic newspaper distribution machine, doing away with the need to pay for someone to hand over copies in person.
Many locals lament the changing times. Kiosks are cement that help hold their communities together, places to gossip about politics, soccer and the weather.
When Pompei briefly opened his kiosk this week to show Reuters the empty shelves, old friends swiftly gathered round hoping he had had a change of heart. They were disappointed.
“This is the second newsstand in the neighborhood to close. It is a tragedy,” said Eufemia Curci, a retired teacher. “It is a great failure of our culture. People don’t read, they just look at their phones. It is sad.”
Pompei had tried to develop his newsstand into a small bookstore, but turnover never took off, and he was still having to get up every morning at 4:30 to take in the morning editions, starting a work day that ran until 8pm.
“Every night I dream about my kiosk because it is in my heart ... but I couldn’t carry on,” he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS