Il Foglio

Il Foglio (English: "The Paper") is an Italian daily newspaper with circulation around 25.000 copies per day, with an overall spread of 47.000, as of 2015. It was founded in 1996 by the Italian journalist and politician Giuliano Ferrara. Since 2015, it has been directed by Claudio Cerasa.

History and profile
Il Foglio was founded in 1996 by Ferrara after he left as editor of the magazine Panorama. The paper is headquartered in Rome. The main editorial policy of Il Foglio (meaning in Italian "The Sheet", referencing the format from a single sheet of paper as used in 19th-century newspapers) is a summary of the most important news of the day with comment and analysis on them. Recently, the size of the paper has increased, with insert and extra pages incorporated especially on Saturday. Between March and April 2023, Il Foglio published one ChatGPT-generated article a day on their official website, hosting a special contest for their readers in the process. The articles tackled themes like the possible replacement of human journalists with AI systems, Elon Musk's administration of Twitter, the Meloni government's immigration policy, and the competition between chatbots and virtual assistants.

Politics
Anglo-American conservatism can roughly be considered its closest political position. It features editorials inspired by American newspapers, especially The Wall Street Journal. Il Foglio can also be considered pro-free market in economics. A significant part of its journalists are members or were members of the Radical Party. This newspaper also hosts several articles from left-leaning and independent columnists. In 2004, Angelo Agostini (1959–2014) categorized it as an activist daily (quotidiano-attivista), alongside Libero on the political right and l'Unità on the political left, in contrast to the institution daily (quotidiano-istituzione) like Corriere della Sera and La Stampa, and the agenda daily (quotidiano-agenda) like La Repubblica.

Ownership
In April 2006, Ferrara said that the newspaper ownership was shared by PBF S.r.l. at 38%, Sergio Zuncheddu (Sardinian builder and owner of the largest daily newspaper of Sardinia, l'Unione Sarda, and of some regional television broadcasting companies, such as Videolina and Tele Costa Smeralda), at 20% to 25%, Denis Verdini (former national coordinator of The People of Freedom) at 15%, Ferrara himself at 10%, and Michele Colasanto at 10%.

Since 2016, the paper has been owned by Sorgente Group, a group operating in the field of real estate investments and finance and chaired by Valter Mainetti. In April 2016, it announced that it had bought 97,48% of the ownership. In December 2016, Sorgente Group bought 100% of the ownership and is thus the only owner of the newspaper.