Newspaper's Last Stand: Last024

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.

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.