Media : Newcomer Puts Italian Taste for ‘News’ to the Test : * L’Indipendente newspaper hopes to become a major national daily. Its approach is daring for Italy: Separate news and commentary.

Ricardo Franco Levi, a Milan journalist, thinks he can build a better mousetrap.

Will educated and affluent Italians beat a path to his door? Each morning is another test of a $40-million gamble on a kind of journalism new to Italy.

On a gray, rainy day--accurately forecast on its weather map, the new national newspaper L’Indipendente was born last week amid many promises--and great uncertainty. It is a long-shot candidate to become Italy’s first major new national daily in nearly a generation.

Edited simultaneously in Milan and Rome and published in both cities, L’Indipendente pledges to live up to its name, economically and editorially.

And, in a departure for Italy, L’Indipendente intends to impress uptown readers by adopting the American/British newspaper philosophy of distinguishing clearly between news and opinion.

“We are convinced there is space in Italy for a quality newspaper that checks its facts carefully,” Levi said. “We will keep news and commentary far apart, which is not usual in Italian papers.”

L’Indipendente’s goal is a break-even circulation of 80,000. That is about 1% of the market in a TV-loving country of nearly 60 million where half a dozen national papers battle for a relatively small readership.

“At first, we will probably be the second newspaper for some people, but eventually we hope to lure educated Italians who at present don’t buy any newspaper at all,” said John Wyles, the new paper’s Rome editor and a former Rome bureau chief for the Financial Times.

Wyles says that L’Indipendente will be “liberal with a small l,” and free-market oriented. It will be internationalist and European in its outlook.” About a third of L’Indipendente’s professional staff of 65 is based in Rome, where the foreign report, including dispatches from five staff correspondents abroad, is edited and assembled.

The new newspaper has borrowed the name of London’s successful Independent, but Levi says his role model is more the Paris-based International Herald Tribune, “slim and complete.” Although swollen by advertising in its inaugural issues, Levi says the paper will usually be about 24 pages. It will cost about $1, the same as other Italian dailies.

Levi, 42, says the paper will not join the Italian tradition of attempting to attract universal readership. L’Indipendente’s raison d’etre , he says, is that “Italian society has matured to the point where, as in other major Western countries, there is room for a newspaper which . . . is designed for and addressed to those who by profession, responsibility, culture (and) reading habits . . . constitute the highest strata of the reading public.”

L’Indipendente will swim in a crowded pool. Already strongly entrenched in the high-quality end of the Italian newspaper business are Milan’s venerable Corriere della Sera, where Levi once worked as a financial editor; the iconoclastic Rome tabloid La Repubblica, and Turin’s La Stampa. One day last week, as L’Indipendente was being born, Corriere reported the sale of 910,000 copies, Repubblica 835,412 and La Stampa 520,000.

Levi launched his competition to the big three last week with an initial press run of 350,000, selling about 80% of it to readers intrigued by the novelty.

In its news coverage, L’Indipendente promises to defy an Italian journalistic style often criticized as verbose and opinionated. News stories will be short and factual, Levi says. Commentary will be restricted to Page 2, the editorial page.

Initial issues of the paper were marked by understated headlines, a light, elegant typeface and an alluring Page 1 index. Except for the front page and a well-packaged cultural section called Album, L’Indipendente, a gray lady, makes spare use of photographs.

“From the outset, L’Indipendente wants to address its readers in a reasonable way, making reason prevail over rhetoric . . . in a spirit of liberty and independence,” Levi said in a launch-day editorial.

Another distinguishing factor that may endear the new paper to independent-minded Italians is that its ownership is calculatingly diffuse.

Most Italian newspapers are controlled by economic or political interests: The family of Turin industrialist Gianni Agnelli controls Corriere and La Stampa, and entrepreneur Carlo De Benedetti has acquired La Repubblica.

By contrast, seven major shareholders, from industrialists to regional newspaper groups, each own a 10% stake in L’Indipendente. The rest of an initial capital of about $40 million has come from small investors, including members of the newspaper’s staff.

“The ownership is designed so that the newspaper has many hands to support it, and not only one to condition it. The independence of its title has a concrete foundation, and is not just an empty affirmation,” asserted Levi.

What Italians Read L’Indipendente joins a field of about 80 daily newspapers in Italy. Several are owned or supported by political parties. Most are regional, although notable exceptions are the nationally circulated Corriere della Sera, La Stampa and Il Giorno. Here are the largest:

Newspaper City of Circulation Publication Corriere della Sera Milan 916,000 La Repubblica Rome 835,000 La Stampa Turin 524,000 Il Messaggero Rome 331,000 Il Resto del Carlino Bologna 303,000 L’Unita Rome 300,000* La Nazione Florence 290,000 Il Giorno Milan 212,000 Il Tempo Rome 187,000 Il Giornale Milan 178,000

* (800,000 Sunday) Source: Political Handbook of the World 1990, Los Angeles Times