Nearly half a million readers chose Sole24 Ore’s “tailor-made suit”by Roberto Napoletano
Four hundred twenty four thousand people have chosen the “tailor-made suit” provided by Il Sole 24Ore, and that number has increased every single month for the last two years.
They buy the newspaper that talks about the economy—all of the economy—which is never partisan and always keeps a proper distance from those who work the levers of power: this is the essence of delivering information that tries to combine disclosure and credibility, investigative journalism and factual monitoring of the government's actions (Rating 24), the daily attempt to ensure a veritable narrative of the country's situation, without giving any discounts or free rides to the rulers in office.
Yes, 424,000 readers, you read that right. And they are now an integral part of a very unique multimedia community who—through “static” copies and “constantly updated” copies, from paper newsstands and digital subscriptions to the website and the mobile version—receive, every day, the “tailor-made suit” they need.
It is a tool of information and of sartorial skill that combines the precious asset of databases (re-organized with the rigor of analyses), re-catalogued news that is continually updated and the network of specialized magazines, and an across-the-board and immediate menu, guided by keywords, that allows users to chose what they like and (most of all) what they need in their “closet.”
We invented eleven brand new digital dailies, with exclusive content and new sections, issues, deadlines, training: a digital compass that updates itself in real time: 10 of them are aimed at a specialized readership (taxes, law, labor, real estate, education, healthcare, local governments, finance, financial consultancy, insurance) and last but not least (Italy 24) entirely written in English and dedicated to Italy, speaks to a global audience of investors, interested in our issues and that tries—with its analyses and its investigations—to show the country as it really is, with all its good and bad sides.
It might sound easy but—trust me—making it happen, every day, is much harder than it sounds. I feel like giving a special thanks to the most competent and generous newsrooms I have ever encountered, which contributed to both the design and the implementation of each and every editorial project, and adhered, from day one, to the choice of a single paper-web organizational platform where the style and the quality of the information must always be homogeneous and recognizable.
The human capital is all in-house and, with that capital, although in times of scarce resources, we turned the old paper daily into a four-in-one version (Business & Territories about the economy; Laws and Taxes, for professionals, with two new pull-outs; Finance & Markets, the newspaper of finance; and the newspaper of current events, all wit their own covers).
For the new Monday edition, we doubled down in technology with Nova, the cultural primacy of ‘Il Sole’ on Sunday, invested in Plus as a flagship for retail investors and inaugurated “How to Spend It” in an integrated circuit with ‘Il Moda 24' and its thematic channels.
We redesigned a website that perfectly matches the newspaper with its sections, Infodata, and a spinneret of portals, where the areas closed to free users are very wide and where 30,000 subscribes actively access the entirety of our content.
We proudly claim the creation of 10 digital service-oriented dailies that represent an absolute uniqueness as far as multimedia editorial apps are concerned—in Europe and America—where the entire ‘Il Sole' system, thanks to the speed and usability of digital media, and to the vision of a company that was able to invest in the uniqueness of the technological and organizational model, works for the individual tax consultant, lawyer, notary, judge, but also engineer, architect, labor consultant, human resources specialist, healthcare professional, and at the same time, the whole world of finance, industry, wealth management, the archipelago of local governments, the vital intersections of large manufacturing companies, banking and other services, as well as the dynamic fabric of small businesses, craftsmanship and commerce.
In other words, no field is left untouched.
The ambition is to provide each reader—every single one —with a tool that is not only useful but in fact indispensable to carry out his/her activities. The editorial choice made three years ago to favor and further specialize content and use digital means in all of its possible shapes and forms to multiply that content is paying off today on the market in a way that exceeds our most optimistic hopes (a €9.7 million growth in digital revenue that currently makes up for 45% of the total, and a +5.9% in revenue from paper copies without discounting or changing the price, year after year). All this inspires us to intensify our effort and gives us hope for the future.
I often quote one of this newspaper’s oldest reporters: “Remember, if ‘Il Sole’ said it, nobody will doubt it.”
And this remains the most difficult challenge for this newspaper, which feels a deep sense of belonging to the very heart of our country, its most vital economic fabric and its civil raison d’etre.
This newspaper never tires of reiterating that numbers have a heart and a soul; yet, it wanted to build, and experiment with an innovative multimedia system in order to deliver information—without distinction between paper and web—in an integrated, vertical circuit that draws the propulsive force of its modernity from the solidity of its ancient roots, its way of conceiving and selling informative content, its professional capacity to rigorously manage old and new information, by joining the piece of legislation, the court ruling, the database of finance, industry and economy, all selected and aimed at specific readers or groups of readers. In short: a tailor-made suit.