Quick Facts
Biography
Maurizio Molinari (born 28 October 1964 in Rome, Italy) is an Italian journalist, as of January 2016 Editor in Chief of the daily La Stampa.
Education and early career
Molinari graduated in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in political science from La Sapienza University in Rome, and, in 1993, with degree in history form the same university. He also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and at Manchester College, Oxford in the United Kingdom.
At the same time in 1984 he starts working as a journalist for La Voce Repubblicana, the newspaper of the Italian Republican Party, and achieves professional journalist status in 1989.
Molinari lives in Turin. He is married since 1994 with Micol Braha. They have four children.
Journalist at La Stampa
Molinari arrives at La Stampa in 1997, and for over a decade he works as correspondent from New York City, then he is briefly correspondent from Jerusalem, before returning to Turin as editor-in-chief in 2016.
Molinari writes also for several Italian newspapers and news magazines, including La Voce Repubblicana, Il Tempo, L'Indipendente, L'Opinione, Il Foglio, and Panorama.
Molinari is a regular guest commentator on Italian TV, including on La7 (where he is a regular at Giuliano Ferrara's Otto e mezzo), Rainews24, TgCom and SkyTg24. He has occasionally been a panelist on CNN, CBS and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, aired on the Public Broadcasting Service.
His main reference points are deemed to be Foreign Affairs, Publishing Industry and the History.
Essayist
Between 2000 and 2015 Molinari has been a prolific essayist, publishing an average of one book per year. Molinari is the author of 16 non-fiction books, all published in Italian: The Jews in Italy: A Problem of Identity (1870-1938) (published by La Giuntina in 1991), The Left and Jews in Italy (1967-1993) (Corbaccio, 1995), The National Interest (Laterza, 2000), Between White House and Botteghe Oscure: Interview with Lamberto Dini (Guerini and Ass, 2001), Wall Street in the Third Millennium (Fondazione Liberal), 2003, No Global? (Laterza, 2003), George W. Bush and the American Mission (Laterza, 2004), Italy Seen by the CIA (1948-2004) (Laterza, 2005), The Jews of New York (Laterza, 2007), Democratic Cowboys (Einaudi 2008), Obama's Country (Laterza, 2009), The Italians of New York (Laterza, 2011), Shadow Government (Rizzoli, 2012), The Eagle and the Butterfly (Rizzoli, 2013), The Caliphate of Terror (Rizzoli, 2015), Jihad. Attack to the West (Rizzoli, 2015), Duel in the Ghetto (Rizzoli, 2017),
His latest "The Caliphate of Terror" (2015) has been presented by Roberto Saviano as the book "we all should read".
Editor in Chief of La Stampa
On 26 November 2015 Molinari is nominated new Editor in Chief of the Turin daily La Stampa, replacing Mario Calabresi, who was heading to Milan to take the place of Ezio Mauro as Editor in Chief of La Repubblica. The President of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, John Elkann, chooses Molinari over the deputy editor Massimo Gramellini, and flanks him with Massimo Russo (former editor of Wired Italia) as co-director.
Molinari becomes also editorial director of Italiana Editrice (ITEDI), the publishing house of La Stampa and of Il Secolo XIX, owned by the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles group (77%) and by Carlo Perrone, publisher of Il Secolo XIX (23%).