Italian podcast start-ups bet a politics-free approach will pay off

Young Italians eager for high-quality news reporting free from the endless political debate that characterises the country’s traditional media have become the latest front in the global podcasting boom.

Chora Media, co-founded by a former editor-in-chief of leading daily La Repubblica, this week acquired rival digital start-up Will Media for €5mn with the goal of creating the country’s largest digital-audio media group.

The sum is tiny in comparison to the multimillion-dollar content deals agreed by Spotify with the likes of Joe Rogan and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but represents an important move in a country whose established media outlets are perceived as latecomers to the digital revolution.

Chora Media reached the 1mn listener mark six months after launch and now has between 1.5-3mn downloads per month. Meanwhile, Will Media’s daily news digest, “The Essential”, which was bought by Spotify last year, is one of the most popular titles in the US platform’s Italian catalogue with an average of more than 1mn monthly listeners.

The number of news podcasts released in Italy grew 126 per cent between 2020 and 2021, according to data released by Spotify. The platform expects digital audio advertising in Europe to reach €200mn in revenues by 2023.

With Italy’s traditional media having lost 40 per cent of its readership between 2014 and 2021, according to data provider Audipress, the country’s media outlets are eyeing growth in the audio and digital space, which according to Spotify will be one of the fastest-growing markets in Europe.

Both Chora Media and Will Media are in their infancy.

Will Media was founded in early 2020 by former Airbnb executive Alessandro Tommasi and Instagram influencer Imen Jane, launching at the height of the pandemic with an initial €1.2mn investment backed by digital education platform Talent Garden and private equity investor Francesco Fumagalli.

The two founders have since parted ways but Will Media has made strides, transforming from an Instagram page with a following of 200,000 to a profitable digital platform employing more than 30 people in under two years. The Instagram page currently has more than 1.3mn followers with whom Will Media shares news reels, explainers, data-led posts and branded content.

The company also holds events and live meetings. Francesco Zaffarano, the 31-year-old editor-in-chief, was hired by Calabresi at both La Stampa and La Repubblica, and later worked in London holding several social media-focused roles at traditional publications including The Economist and the Daily Telegraph.

Chora Media followed a few months later and was launched by Mario Calabresi, the 53-year-old former head of La Repubblica alongside Guido Brera and Roberto Zanco, co-founder and fund manager at investment firm Kairos as well as film-maker Mario Gianani, with a self-funded €3mn investment at the end of 2020.

It has rapidly become Italy’s leading podcast production platform, employing almost 50 people, mostly tech experts, with plans to expand. Its podcasts cover current affairs, mental wellbeing and social topics as well as audio documentary series.

Meanwhile Will Media’s homepage features a drop-down menu offering topics ranging from sustainability to foreign policy. The main banner asks: “On what do you want to make a great impression tonight at dinner?”

“Will [Media] nailed it because it offers younger generations pills of very factual information on selected topics, which is exactly what millennials and Gen Z are looking for,” said Calabresi.

According to Will Media’s Tommasi, by taking the daily political debate core to traditional Italian media out of their offering, they are able to focus on factual, data-driven information which younger generations tend to prefer.

Spotify has also partnered with Chora Media to produce exclusive content and recently bought the rights for one of the group’s newest products, a seven-minute daily podcast on foreign affairs called “Stories”.

“This is the ultimate demonstration that younger generations don’t shun news and information, the problem is the format,” added Calabresi. “I see a strong parallel between empty churches in Italy and the empty newsstands: older people go to church and buy the paper, but younger people don’t want to be told how they should live, by a priest or through newspaper columns.”

Millions of Italians have turned to podcasts and social media for news and factual entertainment, with the number of Spotify’s Italian language podcasts jumping 89 per cent in 2021 compared to the previous year.

Yet Italy’s traditional media companies have been slow to embrace new mediums. Falling revenues, worsened by high fixed costs, have long discouraged strategy revamps and digital investment and even now subscriptions or branded content rarely surpass traditional advertising as a source of profit.

Calabresi, who was fired by La Repubblica’s former publisher in 2019 in part due to a slump in daily circulation, compares his experience to that of a surgeon operating for a decade on a sick patient.

Before heading La Repubblica, Calabresi was editor-in-chief of La Stampa for seven years. Both dailies were acquired in 2020 by Exor, the holding company of Italy’s billionaire Agnelli family, after his departure and are currently undergoing a major strategy overhaul.

“I executed four restructuring plans over a decade and cost-cutting was the sole purpose of all of them, never investments, and if newspapers are dying you can’t switch to digital without heavy investments,” said Calabresi.

“Publishers were not bold enough and journalists were too conservative . . . they continued to worry about their byline on the first page and their article on the right hand pages because that’s where the eye falls first,” he added. “But the next day the paper ends up in a dump.”

While Chora’s and Will’s main source of revenue, which is expected to be a combined €10mn this year, comes from branded content. They insist this approach does not compromise their offering.

“Our community is our watchdog and poor decisions or controversial partnerships would determine major backlashes,” Tommasi said.

Calabresi is confident Chora — which has ambitions to launch in English and French — and Will are on a strong growth path thanks to interest from younger generations.

A former US correspondent, Calabresi approached Tommasi, 15 years his junior, by inviting him out for beer and toast in Milan’s Bar Magenta last winter. Tommasi said: “I liked the idea because I was conscious we were going to end up inside a bigger group sooner or later, but being bought by one of the traditional publishers would have been a contradiction in terms.”