Giampaolo Pansa (1 October 1935 – 12 January 2020) was an Italian journalist, commentator, and novelist. Most of his writings were rooted in modern or contemporary history, notably with regard to the Italian Resistance and the years of Benito Mussolini.
Biography Provenance and early years Giampaolo Pansa was born and raised in Casale Monferrato, Italy, an industrial town near the Po river, located in the province of Alessandria, in Piedmont. His father, Ernesto Pansa, the fifth of six children, grew up in poverty. Because Ernesto was the last child to leave home and marry, his widowed mother (Caterina Zaffiro) moved in with him. As a result, the young Giampaolo developed a close relationship with his grandmother -- who was born in 1869 in the little village of Caresana located north of the Po river.
The Pansas were farm workers, but a generation later, they transitioned to industrial work. As Giampaolo grew up, there were three career options he could take, but working in the local Marl quarries was the least appealing. Another possibility would have been a job at one of the many cement factories in the town.
The third, and as it seemed at the time "cleanest" option would have involved following his father's example and working at the Eternit asbestos plant. He attended school locally at the Istituto Balbo (secondary school), where he received a classical education, opening the way for university admission and a chance to move away.
Graduating from school with top marks and a "cum laude" commendation for his final exams, Pansa enrolled at the University of Turin, where he studied for a degree in political sciences. One of his teachers, Alessandro Galante Garrone, encouraged him to study the history of the Second World War and of the Italian Resistance.
Pansa completed his university studies on July 16, 1959 with a degree in Political Sciences, submitting a dissertation titled 'The Resistance in the Province of Alessandria (1943–1945)'. The work was supervised by Guido Quazza. An expanded version appeared as a book in 1967, titled for publication as "Guerra partigiana tra Genova e il Po" ("The Partisan War between Genoa and the Po").
The novelist's work on the wartime antifascist resistance also earned him the "Einaudi Prize", worth 500,000 lira, and brought him to the attention of the editors and owners at the prestigious Turin-based daily newspaper, La Stampa.
Daily newspaper journalist In 1961 Giampaolo Pansa joined La Stampa and, and over the next thirty years contributed to all of Italy's' leading papers. 1961–1964, La Stampa: He undertook an apprenticeship under the directorship of Giulio De Benedetti, between January 1961 and June 1962. Some of his most memorable contributions during this period concerned the Vajont disaster. 1964–1968, Il Giorno: Working for the Milan-based paper under the directorship of Italo Pietra, Pansa reported on events in the Lombardy region. 1969–1972, La Stampa: Pansa then returned to La Stampa shortly after Alberto Ronchey took over as director of the newspaper, covering the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan. 1972–1973, Il Messaggero: Leaving his northern home-base, he moved to Il Messaggero in Rome to serve as Editor-in-chief under the directorship of Alessandro Perrone, who during the previous five years had pioneered the application of computer graphics and other technological innovations that made Messaggero a uniquely influential newspaper-technology benchmark for Italy. Under Pansa's leadership, the paper maintained a moderate center-left editorial stance, while overseeing a major Rome-based daily during a period of increasing terrorism and anarchism, aligning closely with the country's ruling establishment. He led an editorial team that was influenced by the quarrelsome relationship between Director Perrone and his cousin Ferdinando Perrone, another major shareholder and a constant presence in the offices. Pansa's term as editor ended after Messaggero was sold to Montedison in May 1974. 1973–1977, Corriere della Sera: At the start of July 1973, Pansa joined Corriere della Sera in Genoa, then under the directorship of Piero Ottone, seen by commentators of the time as representative of a younger "more dynamic" generation of newspaper directors. Employed as a "special correspondent", Pansa used his time at Corriere to burnish his credentials as an investigative journalist, notably through a series of pieces produced in partnership with his friend Gaetano Scardocchia, which contributed to the uncovering of the Lockheed scandals. 1977–1991, la Repubblica: Pansa joined in November 1977 as a "special correspondent", and in October 1978 accepted a complementary position as the paper's deputy director. Eugenio Scalfari (co-founder, director, and editor-in-chief) and Pansa guided Repubblica through a difficult period of intensified political instability and street terrorism, from which the tabloid emerged with a growing readership which made it, in 1988, the country's top newspaper with circulation at 730,000 copies. He left in 1991 to pursue other interests, but in 2000 returned to la Repubblica as a regular contributing editor.
Weekly journalist-commentator In parallel with his newspaper work, during the 1980s Pansa also worked regularly for several weekly news magazines. 1983–1984, Epoca: He created the "Quaderno italiano" (loosely, "Italian notebook") column, which was then led by Sandro Mayer. 1984–1987, L'Espresso: He joined in 1984 and created the well-received "Chi sale e chi scende" (loosely, "Who's on the up and who's on the down") column. 1987–1990, Panorama: Pansa moved to the Milan-based news magazine in 1987, raising his profile as a columnist through his "Bestiario" ("Bestiary") column. Then, as now, Panorama was produced under the aegis of the Arnoldo Mondadori Editore (publishing conglomerate), who had founded the magazine back in 1939. Since 1985, it has operated under the directorship of Claudio Rinaldi. During his time there, Giampaolo Pansa became a co-director. His "Bestiario" column further built his reputation for exposing "national malpractice", without descending into hypocrisy. 1991–2008, L'Espresso: He returned to L'Espresso in 1991, bringing his "Bestiario" column with him. At the same time, Giovanni Valentini moved over to la Repubblica, and Giulio Anselmi took over as the director of L'Espresso. Meanwhile, Giampaolo Pansa was installed as co-director. When Anselmi also moved back to the world of daily newspapers, Daniela Hamaui became the magazine's director, while Pansa remained in place as co-director till 2008, the year of his 73rd birthday. According to Pansa, Espresso Director Hamui reacted to his decision to "retire" by screaming throughout the day on which he told her of his decision, "Why do you go away? Why?", following through, after he had left his desk, with a series of angry telephone calls and e-mails.
Perspective Through Pansa's career as a journalist, publications produced by the press conglomerate known today as GEDI Gruppo Editoriale predominated. He worked without any significant break between 1977 and 2008 for two of the group's most successful titles, la Repubblica and then L'Espresso. During his years at la Repubblica, his political perspective aligned with center-left parties, including the Socialist Party and other opposition parties in the Chamber of Deputies. Nevertheless, he was also critical of the Communist Party in his political investigations and commentaries. His political perspectives were also on display in a book he published under the title "La Repubblica di Barbapapà. Storia irriverente di un potere invisibile" ("The Republic of Daddy Beard. Irreverent history of an invisible power"). By the time it was published in 2014, Pansa had become critical of "Barbapapà's" approach. In his biography, Pansa presented a case for the creator of Repubblica demonstrating political bias and, on occasion, heightened self-regard; he also paid tribute to the sheer genius and total dedication to work, which he saw as among of his old boss's formidable array of qualities.
Career highlights After the Piazza Fontana bombing, Pansa created a "counterinformation" dossier that helped identify misinformation spread by the authorities in connection with the aftermath of the bomb massacre. He refused to join in with the more virulent aspects of the campaign that ensued: he refused, for example, to be join the 757 politicians, journalists and "intellectuals" who signed the angry Open letter of June 1971, targeting (the subsequently assassinated) Police Commissioner Calabresi following the (never explained) death of the alleged bomb suspect Giuseppe Pinelli in police custody, and the associated cover-up. Pansa was also among the first of the habitually left-wing journalists to assert, in response to the terrorism of the 1970s and 1980s, that "the Red Brigades were red" – left-wing killers instead of not fascist revivalists trying discredit the political left. Pansa's early and persistent rejection of this theory discredited him in the eyes of many "progressive intellectuals". His investigations of the Red Brigades led to him being targeted, along with his friend and colleague Walter Tobagi. As matters turned out, however, it was Tobagi rather than Pansa that was gunned down on a Milan street.
Pansa also became known as a creator of neologisms and sarcastic "definitions", frequently untranslatable and involving politics. He cast Fausto Bertinotti as "il parolaio rosso" (loosely, the "Red Word") while he identified Italy's Christian Democratic Party as the "White Whale", a literary allusion referencing the party's ability to survive a thousand battles. He described the irrepressible loyalists surrounding the politician Clemente Mastella as "truppe mastellate" ("mastellated troops"), in a conscious echo of the term "truppe cammellate" ("camel-mounted troops"). The Communist Party was the "red elephant" while the right-wing politician Arnaldo Forlani was "the were rabbit". In 1980 he published as article in la Repubblica under the headline "Il giornalista dimezzato" (loosely, "journalism trashed"), in which he castigated what he perceived as the hypocritical conduct of colleagues, who, in his words, "surrendered half of their own professionalism to the party".
Retirement from L'Espresso and later work Reports of Pansa's retirement from L'Espresso on 30 September 2008 tended to explain it not by pointing out that the move came the day before his seventy-third birthday, but by quoting his justification that he found himself opposed to the magazine's editorial line.Giampaolo Pansa, Carta straccia, 2011 (pp. 299–300). While Giampaolo Pansa focused primarily on publishing novels and historical essays during his final twelve years, he still contributed to political magazines and newspapers, including the following: 2008–2010, Il Riformista, Rome 2009–2016, Libero, Milan: here he took the opportunity, in 2011, to reintroduce his "Bestiario" column. 2016–2018, La Verità, Milan 2018–2019, Panorama, Milan 2019–2020, The Post Internazionale, Rome (online)
He later attributed his decision to leave La Verità in 2018 to what he saw as the paper's "Northern League" drift, while insisting that he had himself always enjoyed complete freedom from the editor to write what he wished.
Novels and historical essays The focus to which Pansa would return most frequently in his books and essays was on the wartime resistance, which he had studied for his university degree.