Press: La Stampa

If Henry Ford owned the New York Times; if he did not treat it as a plaything but visited its plant every day; if he shuttled between Detroit, Manhattan and Washington, lending the President of the U. S. his ear and printing editorials that obviously originated in the White House —the result would be very much like something that exists in Italy.

Bellwether of the Italian Press is Benito Mussolini's Popolo d'ltalia, house organ of Fascismo. Behind it trail a flock of "semiofficial" newspapers, potent among which is conservative La Stampa, published in Turin by the man who builds four of every five automobiles in Italy, Senator Giovanni Agnelli. Proud old Senator Agnelli takes his journalism as seriously as he takes his Fiat automobiles.

He has staffed La Stampa with crack journalists. His editorials are considered almost as authoritative as if they appeared in II Duce's Popolo.

Last May Publisher Agnelli opened La Stampa's new 19,000,000-lire ($1,600,000) building, a model plant with the latest presses, telephoto receiving apparatus and even television rooms. Last month he plunged far ahead of his competitors with a venture unheard of in the U. S. He supplied each of La Stampa's foreign bureaus with portable wireless sets to flash photographs to the Turin plant.

Last week word reached the U. S. of Publisher Agnelli's latest exploit. He equipped every Stampa reporter, at home and abroad, with a small, high-powered candid camera. Henceforth Stampa newshawks will be expected to snap everything newsworthy they see, indoors or out, without fussing with flashlights.

Before the Senator embarked on his year of innovation, La Stampa had 200,000 circulation. Last week it reached 295,000, was stepping hard on the heels of the panting leader, Milan's Corriere della Sera.