Carlo Caracciolo

Don Carlo Caracciolo, 9th Prince of Castagneto, 4th Duke of Melito (23 October 1925 – 15 December 2008), was an Italian publisher.[1] He created Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso, one of Italy's leading publishing groups, which included Italy's newspaper of record, La Repubblica.[2] He was known as "the editor prince", a reference to his aristocratic birth and elegant manner.[3][4][5]

Early life

The oldest of three children, Caracciolo was born in Florence to Filippo Caracciolo, 8th Principe di Castagneto, 3rd Duca di Melito, and American heiress Margaret Clarke. He was an older brother to Nicola Caracciolo and Marella Agnelli, the wife of Fiat S.p.A. chairman Gianni Agnelli and half-sibling of film producer Ettore Rosboch von Wolkenstein, whose daughter Bloomberg News journalist Elisabetta "Lili", Caracciolo's goddaughter, married Prince Amedeo of Belgium, Archduke of Austria-Este. Along with his brother and sister, he grew up in Rome and Turkey, and spoke Italian, French, and English.[6] At 18, he fought in the Italian resistance movement during World War II. After the war, he attended Harvard Law School and worked for a New York law firm that had as a partner Allen Dulles, future head of the CIA. In the United States, he began to show a serious interest in publishing.[2]

Career

In 1951, Caracciolo moved into publishing in Milan, and in 1955 set up the N.E.R. (Nuove Edizioni Romane) publishing house with the progressive industrialist Adriano Olivetti, manufacturer of Olivetti typewriters. In October 1955, the company founded the news magazine L'Espresso with editors Arrigo Benedetti and Eugenio Scalfari.[7] Caracciolo was a man of the liberal left. He disdained his aristocratic title but betrayed it in his elegance of dress and manner. He believed that a modern postwar Italian republic should be run on lay rather than religious principles, and his news outlets campaigned for reform of the laws governing divorce and abortion.[2] L'Espresso was characterized from the beginning by an aggressive investigative journalism strongly focused on corruption and clientelism by the Christian Democracy party.[8] This made the main shareholder Olivetti unpopular with the ministries and large companies that were the primary customers of his main business. In 1956, with the magazine losing money, Olivetti made Caracciolo a present of the majority shareholding.[2]

In 1976, Caracciolo and Eugenio Scalfari, with backing from the publisher Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, set up the daily newspaper La Repubblica. It was founded in Rome as a national newspaper and published in the novel tabloid size.[2] In 1984, shortly before it began to outsell the prestigious Corriere della Sera, Caracciolo took his publishing activities to the Italian stock exchange.[2] Four years later, he sold his holdings in Editoriale L'Espresso to Mondadori. In 1990, he was shocked to learn that Mondadori's heirs had sold out to Silvio Berlusconi, whose politics he detested. After much in-fighting and litigation, the news publications were hived off into the Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso controlled by the CIR Group of entrepreneur Carlo De Benedetti,[2] of which Caracciolo remained honorary president until 2006.[9][10]

In June 1989, Caracciolo was awarded the Italian Order of Merit for Labour. In 1991, he and his wife Violante Visconti purchased the Torrecchia Vecchia estate, and subsequently developed its villa with architect Gae Aulenti, around which they created a notable, English-style garden to designs by Dan Pearson and others. In 2007, a year after he retired from the Espresso Group to become its honorary chairman, he bought a 33 percent share in the French newspaper Libération.[11]

Personal life and family

Caracciolo died in Rome, aged 83. According to his biographer and former co-editor of L'Espresso, Nello Ajello: "He set an example for free and independent editorial content that initially seemed marginal and exclusive and instead became a major force in Italian newspaper publishing."[3] He gave his whole inheritance to his adopted daughther Jacaranda Caracciolo di Melito Falck,[12] daughter of Anna Cataldi,[13] who he recognized before his death,[14] and who became the principal heir of his estate;[15][16] this caused a dispute between his descendents.[17][18][19] She married Prince Fabio Borghese, a member of the Borghese family whose grandfather Giangiacomo Borghese served as Fascist Governor (mayor of Rome) under Benito Mussolini and was a descendant of Marcantonio Borghese, 5th Prince of Sulmona.[20]

Honours

References
  1. Ajello, Nello (15 December 2008). "Il ragazzo che amava i giornali". L'Espresso (in Italian). Archived from the original on 19 December 2008. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  2. "Carlo Caracciolo: newspaper publisher who set up La Repubblica". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  3. Povoledo, Elisabetta (17 December 2008). "C. Caracciolo, 83, a Publisher and La Repubblica Founder, Is Dead". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  4. Greenslade, Roy (18 December 2008). "Farewell to Italy's 'editor prince'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  5. "Carlo Caracciolo: Newspaper publisher who founded 'La Repubblica' founder and champion". The Independent. 22 December 2008. ISSN 1741-9743. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  6. Colacello, Bob (8 August 2013). "The Mysterious Heirs of Italian Prince Carlo Caracciolo". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  7. Marron, Gaetana; Puppa, Paolo; Somigli, Luca, eds. (2007). Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies. Vol. 1. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press. p. 980. ISBN 978-1-5795-8390-3. Retrieved 17 February 2023 – via Googles Books.
  8. Moliterno, Gino, ed. (2000). Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture. Encyclopedias of Contemporary Culture (annotated ed.). Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press. p. 290. ISBN 978-0-4151-4584-8. Retrieved 17 February 2023 – via Google Books.
  9. "Addio a Carlo Caracciolo padre di Espresso e Repubblica". La Repubblica (in Italian). Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  10. "History". Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso. 2009. Archived from the original on 24 November 2009. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  11. "Italian publisher Carlo Caracciolo dies". Herald Sun. 16 December 2008. ISSN 1038-3433. Archived from the original on 18 February 2009. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  12. "Jacaranda Caracciolo Falck: 'Mio padre non avrebbe voluto finire sbattuto in prima pagina'". La Stampa (in Italian). 20 January 2009. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  13. "L'opinione del miliardario: così dovrebbero intitolarsi gli approfondimenti in prima serata". Corriere Quotidiano (in Italian). 22 December 2018. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  14. Capezzone, Daniele (8 October 2016). "Cosa svela Gigi Moncalvo sui Caracciolo". Formiche.net (in Italian). Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  15. De Francesco, Gian Maria (23 August 2009). "Caracciolo 'risorge' e va dal notaio per Jacaranda". Il Giornale (in Italian). Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  16. Massaro, Fabrizio (18 December 2010). "Jacaranda prende tutta l'eredità Caracciolo. A lei l'11,7% dell'Espresso". MF Milano Finanza (in Italian). No. 249. p. 18. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  17. Conti, Paolo (20 October 2009). "Lite sull'eredità Caracciolo. Il giudice ferma Jacaranda". Corriere della Sera (in Italian). Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  18. "Accordo tra eredi Caracciolo, ai Revelli il 5,4%". La Repubblica (in Italian). 21 June 2011. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  19. Baldini, Gianluca (24 June 2014). "Accordo tra eredi Caracciolo, ai Revelli il 5,4%". Bluerating.com (in Italian). Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  20. Bowles, Hamish (22 January 2018). "A Home In Tuscany Undergoes A Magnificent Makeover". Architectural Digest. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  21. "Le onorificenze della Repubblica Italiana — Caracciolo di Castagneto Carlo" (in Italian). Quirinale. Retrieved 17 February 2023.

Further reading
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