Tia Chapman

Newspaper's Last Stand

  • NeWCover-page-Scartoni
  • On June 14, 2023, Scartoni knits his brow as he moves damp, foreign newspapers underneath a protected awning on a rainy day. Several days earlier, on June 10, 2023, in the same situation, he says, “Piangono piangono. Sono in lutto perché non li compra nessuno.” (They’re weeping, they’re weeping. They are in mourning because no one buys them.)In six months, the foreign newspapers disappear from the newsstand’s outdoor racks and are replaced with toys by new managers at the newsstand.
  • On November 25, 2024, while the city sleeps, newspaper delivery driver Paolo Camorri, left, unloads stacks of the day’s papers to Piero Scartoni, right. Thousands of newsstands in Italy vanish each year. One quarter of Italian towns no longer have a newsstand. In the past twenty years, seventy percent of Italy's newsstands have closed.
  • Scartoni cuts through the zip ties on a stack of the day’s newspapers on May 27, 2023. Scartoni wonders aloud, “What's a New York newsstand owner doing? [Are they doing] What I am at this hour? I think they are.”
  • On November 26, 2023, Piero Scartoni puts the day’s headlines from La Nazione (the Nation) into a newsstand marquis. “Fingono,” (They pretend) reads the headline. Published since 1859, La Nazione is Italy’s oldest continually published newspaper and predates Italy’s unification by two years.
  • Retired friend Piero Mori, left, and retired younger brother Sergio Scartoni lean towards Piero Scartoni, right, on May 27, 2023. When they ask Scartoni about his sale of the newsstand and his retirement, Scartoni remains silent and then he jokes that staying at home would be his death referring to how much he enjoys interacting with others and selling newspapers. “É un parto difficile” (It is a difficult birth/labor) says Mori describing Scartoni’s retirement.
  • Piero Scartoni checks his math as he reviews a cafe’s weekly newspaper bill on October 19, 2023. The price of different Italian newspapers changes each day based on whether the paper contains additional sections or not. Scartoni has never used a calculator and adds customers' bills by hand and in his head. If people interrupt Scartoni as he is adding sums, he waits and resumes adding after their comment or question. He does not get angry. {quote}Sei vispo!{quote} (you're spry) says one customer, when Scartoni arrives at the sum of his weekly newspaper subscription in his head before he does.
  • Scartoni cycles through Arezzo on his way to the newsstand in the early morning hours of May 26, 2023. This has been his routine since 1953.
  • Before dawn, on October 5, 2023, customer Cesare Badii, left, asks Scartoni, “when is the handover?” referring to the search for a new newsstand manager.“A matter of days. We aren't sure,” answers Scartoni. The two are waiting for the newspaper delivery truck.
  • When people pass by and describe how nice his impending retirement will be, Scartoni responds matter-a-factly, “Sono solo,” (I’m alone) referring to the fact that he is widowed. One day, a customer who is hard of hearing asks Scartoni what he has said. Scartoni answers by repeating, “I. Am. Alone,” more loudly than expected and the newsstand falls silent. This image was taken of Scartoni through the window of his newsstand on June 15, 2023.
  • Scartoni spends part of each day reading his newsstand's newspapers, magazines and books. He discusses what he reads with his customers and suggests articles and books to them based on their interests. One day he asks a customer, {quote}did you know that there is trash on Mount Everest and no one knows how to get it down? It is a real problem.{quote} This photo was taken on October 12, 2023.
  • On October 10, 2023, the delivery truck arrives late, and, pressed for time, attorney Giovanni Gatteschi, left, reaches in to search for his desired newspaper titles. Over a dozen different newspaper titles arrive at the newsstand in mixed stacks each day. There are national newspapers, regional newspapers and sports newspapers. As October rolls on, customers say things like, 'Oh, I was thinking I'd find you closed,' and 'I’m glad you're still here!' When people ask, “when are you closing?” Scartoni answers, “There's lots of confusion . . . . I'll tell you once I know,” and “The situation is fluid.” When one woman says, “If you leave us, you leave us in ignorance,” Scartoni covers his face in both his hands.
  • Piero Buratti leaves the newsstand with his cocker spaniel “Mao” on June 8, 2023. Mao carries the newspaper “l’Unita,’” a left leaning Italian newspaper, in his mouth: Buratti says that because cocker spaniels like to retrieve things, he always lets Mao carry home his daily newspaper. Buratti named the dog “Mao” to tease a right leaning friend who owned the dog’s mother and had planned to name Mao “Benito” after Benito Mussolini instead. As newsstands recede from cities and towns, they take with them important social meeting points. Some even call them public living rooms “salotti urbani.” For centuries they have been places where people on the left and on the right shoulder up next to one another to buy their news and face one another in public.
  • Scartoni reads a newspaper surrounded by the small toys and trinkets that news sellers like him sell in increasing number in order to stay in business. Scartoni jokes, “first I worked in an “edicola” (newsstand), and now I just sell the “ridicola” (ridiculous), playing on the similar sounds of the words for newsstand and ridiculous in Italian. Scartoni is reading an insert in the Corriere della Sera called, “I Fell In Love With A Bicycle,” describing recommended bicycle routes around Italy. At right, Scartoni has circled a page from the article and taped it to the door of the newsstand. At left, stands Scartoni’s bicycle that he rides several kilometers to and from the newsstand each day.
  • Piero Scartoni shakes the hand of a customer on October 3, 2024. A couple days later, on October 5, 2023, a man enters and asks Scartoni for a book recommendation. As the man is waiting to pay, the man says, “last night, Piero, I dreamt of my mom.” “Happens to me too,” responds Scartoni handing the man his change.
  • Scartoni chats outside his newsstand on June 17, 2023. “Sta fotografando un mito.” (You are photographing a myth) says a man on this day. “C'è sempre stato.” (He has always been), adds the woman next to him. Others add that Scartoni is an institution, with one saying that she 'comes here to see Piero more than to buy the paper.' Scartoni not only knows which papers each of his customers reads, but also remembers what is happening in their lives. He asks one man about an ongoing knee problem. He asks another about how the man's father is doing. After he asks a woman about her late husband, he adds, {quote}forza corraggio,{quote} (strength, courage) as she leaves.
  • On Wednesday, October 4, 2023, a man leans into Scartoni and talks to him in a low voice. Afterwards, Scartoni reports to his younger brother Sergio, “Devo arrendermi.” (I need to surrender).Later Scartoni adds, ”Sembra facile da fuori ma dentro l'uomo è tutto un altra cosa.” (It looks easy on the outside but inside you, it is a whole different thing).
  • On November 5, 2023, Scartoni picks up one of his headline posters that has blown into the street and stuck to the ground on a windy, rainy morning. “Before [smart] phones, one out of every two people bought newspapers,” he remembers. From 1995 to 2022, Italian print newspaper readership shrank to a fifth of what it had once been.
  • A May 10, 2023 Guardian article quotes Scartoni describing the decline of newspapers saying, “The barbarians arrived, and now artificial intelligence is on the way, which will produce monsters.” On June 5, 2023, an apparent robot monster towers over Scartoni’s newsstand as, at bottom right, Scartoni faces the robot from his newsstand's entrance. While the robot monster is only part of a recycling campaign, it in many ways embodies the artificial, dehumanized, robotic future that Scartoni and his customers oppose. Scartoni and many of his newspaper readers do not own smart phones nor even cell phones. ‘People look at their phones and screens instead of greeting one another,’ says customer Cesare Badii. Another customer, Marcello Mascalchi says entering the newsstand, “Did you see the robot man that was here? That robot man rusts. Our Piero doesn’t rust!” referring to Scartoni.
  • On October 8, 2023, Scartoni smiles and wipes his face in the pre dawn darkness. At left, for the first time ever, Scartoni has kept his newsstand, closed and dark: he is waiting to show possible, new managers how he opens the newsstand each day. Later, the possible new managers cancel their commitment. It appears that there is no one as yet coming forward to take his place.
  • On Sunday, October 22, 2023, Piero Scartoni, 91, pauses to look at the newsprint on his hands. His daughter Cristiana has told him that someone else is coming in the next week to take over the managing of the newsstand. It has been difficult to find anyone willing to take Scartoni's place and now someone has been found.
  • On October 26, 2023, Scartoni, right, covers his face as he realizes that the day's newspapers have arrived and he has no way into the newsstand. His keys have been taken as part of the transition to a new owner and manager. At center, Enrico Donati looks on. Donati eventually loans Scartoni his Swiss Army knife to help open the day's sealed, zip tied newspapers. After the transition, Scartoni is given back the keys. He decides that he will continue to sell newspapers: he just will no longer be the owner, but instead he says he will be a {quote}garzone{quote} (helper/apprentice) to the new manager. In the weeks that follow, Scartoni remains responsible for the newsstand's newspapers while the new managers focus more on stocking and selling the toys and gadgets that newsstands increasingly rely on to stay in business.
  • On November 6, 2023, working now as a helper as opposed to the owner, Scartoni straightens magazines and awaits the newspaper delivery truck before dawn. Outside stand new, coin-operated toy dispensers that have arrived as part of the newsstand’s new management.
  • Early on the morning of November 15, 2023, Cesare Badii, right, helps Scartoni move newly delivered newspapers. Later on this day, a car hits Scartoni's back bicycle wheel as he is returning to the newsstand for its afternoon hours. A couple days later, back at work, he tells friend and newspaper delivery driver Paolo Camorri about the accident and how surprised he is that he has not broken anything to which Camorri replies, “L’acciaio non si rompe,” (steel doesn't break).
  • On November 21, 2023, Scartoni looks toward where the sun will rise and says that the clouds are clearing and the day will be sunny.
  • On June 6, 2023 Scartoni closes the newsstand for the afternoon as a man waits. Scartoni says “Someday people will walk by [a newsstand] and say ‘what was that for?’ And others will say, ‘Oh, that's where they used to sell newspapers,’ nobody will know what newsstands are.”
  • On November 27, 2023, the sun rises high in the sky as newspapers stand unclaimed outside the darkened newsstand. Scartoni has broken his leg at home the evening before. A man stops to investigate the unusual sight. Later, from his hospital bed, Scartoni, says, “it is a disaster,” thinking of his newspaper customers.
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