SEIF‘s history began in April 2009, its shareholders founding a company with the objective of publishing a newspaper within just a few months: il Fatto Quotidiano.
An initiative of Antonio Padellaro, former director of l’Unità, the Fatto project was launched on the web in the summer of 2009 through the blog Antefatto.it and the Facebook and Twitter community, and was simultaneously presented at public meetings.
Together with a group of shareholders and entrepreneurs, from the start the initiative involved a group of journalists, including Marco Travaglio (appointed deputy editor in fall 2010 and editor in chief in February 2015), Peter Gomez (editor in chief of ilfattoquotidiano.it since June 2010), Marco Lillo and – on the managerial front – the current president and CEO Cinzia Monteverdi.
Issue number 1 hit newsstands on 23 September 2009. The newspaper has already collected 40,000 subscriptions before going to press.
The choice of the name is explained by Travaglio as a tribute to the journalist Enzo Biagi, presenter of the TV programme Il Fatto, while the logo of the child with the megaphone was inspired by Indro Montanelli’s La Voce.
The online news website ilfattoquotidiano.it, whose head office is located in Milan, debuted on 22 June 2010 and is now one of the most visited news sites in Italy, with 24.1 million unique users and a daily average of about 1.6 million (source: Censuario Audiweb – July 2018).
In November 2016, the newspaper’s publisher and editorial staff – until then based in the Prati district of Rome – moved to their new headquarters in Via di Sant’Erasmo, in the Celio district. 2016 also saw the start of diversification with the launch of a new business unit, Paper First, a publishing house specialised in texts on investigations, politics and current affairs distributed both at newsstands and bookstores.
SEIF’s diversification continued with the goal of providing various content and services to our community, but also to broaden the user base.
February 2017 saw the launch of Loft Produzioni, the new division dedicated to the production and distribution of television content and the organisation of events, and on November 3rd the launch of Loft, the subscription-based TV platform offering exclusive programmes available on the app and website. Television production is also aimed at selling shows to several major broadcasters.
In May 2017 FQ Millennium was founded, the new monthly featuring investigations and long-form articles directed by Peter Gomez. FQ Millennium is an “open” monograph with a main subject that is analysed in all its facets. The name is a tribute to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium, the monthly that never existed and yet today is finally on newsstands.
Today SEIF is no longer just a newspaper, but a data company that offers a range of products and services to its community and that is preparing to face the challenges of the digital revolution.