Inside the Corriere Canadese's Toronto boardroom, co-editor Antonio Nicaso strokes an invisible hair between his hands with exaggerated concentration, waiting for the latest bout of laughter to subside, and for the eight editors present to refocus. The impeccably dressed 37-year-old, who wears a suit to work every day and speaks in a soft, contemplative voice, seems more like a banker than a Mafia fighter, even though he has written 10 books about organized crime. His work has garnered several awards, including one from the RCMP, which hangs on his cubicle wall.

At this meeting, he sits at the head of a long oak table. Everyone is speaking Italian, and every comment ends with a punch line. Most here are young, and a few are relatively new arrivals from Italy; the Corriere prides itself on its strong ties to the homeland and its editorial staff of 15 reflects that.

On this particular day in November 2001, the discussion begins with a story planned for the front page that fits perfectly into the daily's pro-papal sentiment: This morning, Ontario's minister of municipal affairs and housing, Chris Hodgson, is presenting a cheque of $1,375,000 to fund the Pope's 2002 visit to Toronto.

"Anything else?" Nicaso asks.

"Terrorism," says reporter Pierpaolo Bozzano, a real newcomer who arrived from Italy only a month earlier. He's been following the story of Amid Farid Rizk, the Canadian of Egyptian origin found in a ship container in the port city of Gioia Tauro, Italy. The Corriere was the first to report the story in North America after learning of it via an Italian newswire. The paper has broken many stories that later make it to the rest of the North American press through these wire services.

"Amid, my friend," says Bozzano, smiling, "was released from custody because there was no proof against him. In regard to Hussein," he goes on, referring to Liban Hussein, the Ottawa businessman who turned himself in when he saw his name on the U.S. Treasury list of people suspected of financing terrorism, "the judge said there wasn't a single motive to hold him in custody, either." Bozzano plans to write about how police are arresting people without warrants.

"Let's not forget," Nicaso begins reproachfully, "that this is in the context of a terrorist act. When one is found travelling in a container with-." Nicaso is cut off by Bozzano, who, unfazed, replies, "He was a businessman who had a cell phone and-." Bozzano is now cut off by the interjecting voices of his colleagues, who agree with Nicaso. Later, defending his point of view, Bozzano says, "My fear with terrorism in Italy is that he was the first to be arrested with the new law allowing police to arrest people with the suspicion of terrorism. It leaves a lot of power to the police. What I wanted to say was that in my opinion we shouldn't have only written the news but to have taken a position, to say that it's risky." There is little room in the 16-page paper for editorials, but Bozzano says his sentiment is behind all of his news articles on terrorism.

Although its editorial meetings include sometimes-passionate debates, the Corriere rarely provides analysis of the news it reports. Staff writer Irene Zerbini, 33, who has been in Canada for four years, says what the Corriere lacks most is the space to cover stories with more than one source or from various angles. "Most people get news from the radio but they need someone who has the courage to make an opinion." Elena Caprile, the Corriere's editor-in-chief, has been at the paper since 1972, when she started as managing editor. She says that as the only daily in Canada printed in the Italian language, the "fiercely Canadian, proudly Italian" paper's mandate is to convey world events in Italian. Caprile says that opinions matter but not as much as covering the news. "We have to be very careful," she adds, "because we can really influence the people." Yet the Corriere, when it feels the need, can serve up biting commentary and firebrand criticism. After Mel Lastman shook the hand of a Hells Angel in January, Zerbini wrote that the Toronto mayor, who claimed to be oblivious of the Hells Angels' murderous track record, ought to pick up a newspaper every once in a while. In a special "Comment" column on January 14, 2002, Nicaso stated: "The mayor's comment ('They seemed to me a good group of kids') turned my stomach and I thought of the innocent victims, and our colleague [Michel Auger] whom they shot five times and the apathy of those who pretend nothing's wrong if the problem doesn't affect them."

But these moments of anger-induced reflection are rare. Sadly undermining its own potential, the Corriere offers its audience predictable content: a daily sports section, a weekly feature on the Catholic church, and events of regional clubs in the Italian community. Its news briefs, covering world events with a strong focus on Canadian politics and Italian news, are an invaluable service to its older, Italian-speaking audience. But in not providing much else, it misses the opportunity to genuinely reflect-and provoke-its audience. Some even say the 47-year-old Corriere, with a circulation of 27,300, in sticking with a stale agenda, has lost sight of how best to serve an evolving audience whose sense of identity and interests have changed profoundly since the 1950s.

There's no question that in the beginning, the Corriere Canadese understood its audience and served it well. In 1953, Montreal-born Dan Iannuzzi, 20, came to Toronto and met with Arturo Scotti, a former editor of one of Iannuzzi's father's Italian-language papers, La Verita (The Truth), published out of Montreal. Scotti told Iannuzzi he should start up the first post-Second World War Italian newspaper in Toronto, where the Italian immigrant population was steadily growing. Between 1946 and 1963, more than 315,000 Italians arrived in Canada and settled as permanent immigrants, joining the 110,000 plus who had immigrated in waves between the First and Second World Wars. Most settled in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, or in smaller cities with established Italian communities, like Sault Ste. Marie and Windsor. By the '60s, most had permanently settled in Toronto, in the College Street area. As that area became congested, Italians migrated to St. Clair Avenue West between Dufferin Street and Lansdowne Avenue. In the '70s, these Italians were enticed to bigger homes in the suburbs, status symbols earned through backbreaking labour in blue-collar jobs. By this time, Italians had the highest rate of home ownership in Canada.

Despite his youth, Iannuzzi knew about the hardships faced by Italian-Canadians. During the Second World War, his Canadian-born father was interned in a concentration camp in Petawawa, Ontario, along with 500 other Canadians of Italian heritage, as the government of the day practised its own brand of fascism. Before locking him up for two and a half years, the federal government shut down Iannuzzi's other paper, L'Italia, and other Italian weeklies in Montreal and Toronto, for the pro-fascist editorials in a few of the papers.

But when Scotti proposed a partnership, Iannuzzi was reluctant; he had to follow his dream of going to New York first. That winter, however, he returned to Toronto and decided to give it a shot. Iannuzzi hawked his car and got a $2,000 loan from the Royal Bank. He and Scotti rented the facilities of a Finnish paper and printed their first issue of the Corriere Canadese, or Canadian Courier, on June 1, 1954, National Italian Day.

In that inaugural issue, Scotti quoted an Italian prelate who said the Italians of Toronto needed a paper more than they needed a church. Scotti compared the Italian community to better organized and more vocal groups, which had up to four papers representing them, like the Jewish and Ukrainian communities. Stories dealt with the unionization efforts of construction workers, mostly Italians. In 1955, the paper went biweekly and in 1969, it went daily. Throughout the '60s and subsequent decades, the Corriere often contained soap-opera fiction, descriptions of Italian cities, and the latest revelations of Italian pop-icon Padre Pio, a Franciscan priest who bore the wounds of Christ on the palms of his hands. The paper also came with the made-in-Italy journal Il Tempo in 1962, always two days old by the time it hit Canadian newsstands.

From 1989 to 1995 the Corriere experimented with bilingualism. About one-third of the paper's content was in English, and an English-language weekly supplement called Italics Plus was introduced. But the new content was added at a time of financial insecurity: the Corriere had just returned from being a triweekly in 1989 to a daily in 1990. Shortly thereafter, the Corriere slumped back to a tri-weekly. Despite Iannuzzi's expectations, the English content, the presence of more opinion articles, and an overall dedication to becoming a "faster, more aggressive, more attractive and effective" newspaper, did not help. The paper had to stay focused on the audience it was reaching: first-generation Italian-Canadians, and not their children. But the paper reemerged as a daily in 1994 with a whole new plan. Instead of splitting the paper down the middle with English news on the left and Italian news on the right, the paper would come with an English page, Tandem Daily, to ease second- and third-generation readers into a new and improved spin-off publication; Tandem, the weekly, was born in 1995.

Since the beginning, Iannuzzi has been building a media empire, with the Corriere as its flagship paper. Today, the 68-year-old mogul has the same "no-bullshit" expression that can be seen in photographs of him as a young entrepreneur, with Citizen Kane's dramatic arching eyebrows and narrow eyes, although now Iannuzzi resembles an older Orson Welles. His empire is run under the banner of Multimedia WTM Corp., of which he is president and CEO. Multimedia boasted almost $10 million in revenue for the first half of 2001. Corriere Canadese and Tandem are brand names licensed under contract to an Italian cooperative of journalists called Italmedia Societa Co-operativa arl of Rome. A subsidiary of Multimedia, October Press Services, provides the co-op with publishing services at an established fee; Multimedia's net income in 2001 was $537,423, up from $167,498 in 2000. Among the papers published via Multimedia's 10 subsidiaries are the Spanish tri-weekly Correo Canadiense, the Portuguese weekly Nove Ilhas, and eight Town Crier newspapers. In December 2001, the company was granted a television licence for a channel airing programs in their original language with subtitles in English or French-a groundbreaking initiative to promote intercultural appreciation.

But the mothership of Multimedia's publications remains a bastion of the past. Serving a community still struggling to define itself, the Corriere's tradition of only reporting the news has developed at the expense of cultivating a voice that makes sense to younger generations of Italian-Canadians. Ironically, that was the easy part when Iannuzzi first started the Corriere and its audience needed a paper that could talk to them in their language and make them feel more at home in Canada.

Today, the Corriere comes with a copy of La Repubblica, Italy's second largest daily, tucked in with it, to keep readers informed beyond news on the culture and politics of Italy. In the Italian-Canadian communities of big cities like Toronto and Montreal, or in suburban enclaves north of Toronto like Vaughan or Woodbridge, where many Italian-Canadians now live, the Corriere appeals to the same readership it's always maintained. On the St. Clair West morning streetcar, Italian workers scan the paper's headlines, juggling the Corriere and La Repubblica. In espresso bars on that same street, soccer fans swear by the Corriere's thick sports section, replete with all the news fit to print on the Italian regional soccer clubs and regular commentary by sports editor Nicola Sparano. Readers receive 20 litres of mosto (grape juice for wine-making) and a carafe for a year's subscription. And every week, Tandem appears, with its mix of entertainment and cultural news meant to appeal to younger readers, in English.

The package has multiple personalities and garners mixed reviews from readers. Professor Michael Lettieri, associate dean of humanities at the Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto and director of the Italian School of Middlebury College, says the Corriere deals with community news better than any other paper and calls journalists like Nicaso "second to none." If he wants news in a succinct way, he reads the Corriere. For more in-depth coverage, he reads La Repubblica, while his kids snap up Tandem before he gets a peek at it.

Max Stefanelli, 33, a former lawyer who left Italy for Canada in 1999, insists that the Corriere's content doesn't interest younger people. He expects the paper in its current format will die within 10 years. "Young kids don't give a shit about Festa di San Gregorio in the banquet hall of a small community from a small village in the south of Italy."

The first generation's love of the old ways may be rejected by their children, but their feelings of alienation from Canadian society are somewhat understandable, and haven't been helped by the media's stereotypical portrayal of Italians as Mafiosi or manual labourers. Italian-Canadians thought they could fight these stereotypes and prove themselves respectable through hard work and the accumulation of wealth. But that did not resolve the identity crisis that is common among immigrants and their Canadianized children, as documented in Kenneth Bagnell's 1989 collection of essays, Canadese: a Portrait of the Italian Canadians. He quotes Franca Carella, former director of social services at Villa Colombo, an Italian old-age home in Toronto: "There is something missing among too many Italians," she says. "They came here in the fifties with a vision-making money and owning a house. They got the house. It became a castle. Then they gave their children everything they never had-clothes, cars, trips. But too many forgot that while we wear five-hundred-dollar boots on our feet, our heads and hearts can be empty. What about the inner person? We are forgetting the emotional needs of people."

As the materialism grew, it was used as a measure of the community's progress. But in many ways, older Italian-Canadians have the same feelings of loyalty to Italy as the earlier sojourners who came to work in Canada temporarily at the turn of the century. And like those who returned to their homeland after making enough money to support a better life there, thousands of Italian-Canadians, once permanent residents of Canada, repatriated to Italy in the '80s. Census figures show that in 1991 there were 351,620 immigrants of Italian origin in Canada, a decline from 366,815 in 1986. After years of discussion, the Italian government has taken note of its expatriates' dedication to Italy by allowing Italians living abroad to vote in the next election. The vote's eventuality was a contributing factor in the addition of La Repubblica to the Corriere. Although the declining number of immigrants posed a threat to the Corriere's circulation, which 10 years ago was 32,500, the paper's founder saw that it also represented another opportunity. Second- and third-generation Italians were a new demographic, not nostalgic for Italy but with a pride in their heritage that could be expressed, and exploited, in a weekly supplement integrating Italian culture and North American attitude.

With its entertainment news and reviews focus, Tandem tries to fill the Corriere's cultural void. Housed in the same building as the Corriere, Tandem carries the more expansive and reflective writing of the Corriere's reporters, whose bylines are often missing from the Corriere. Tandem employs only two people full-time, using mostly freelance writers and Corriere staff. About 20 percent of the weekly's news articles derive from the Corriere and are translated into English. The writing is uneven in quality. Some articles have charming slips: "The protagonista [of the Red Violin] was a U.S. citizen, Samuel Jackson."

Tandem's target audience, according to its managing editor, Angela Baldassarre, consists of "urban individuals" between 20 and 45 years old. But Tandem is most popular in communities where a strong Italian presence is found, such as Vaughan, to which an entire page called Maintstreet/Vaughan is dedicated, and where its controlled distribution to 31,650 households accounts for its high total circulation of 50,900. To Tandem's credit, 20 percent of its readership is not of Italian origin, but enjoys Tandem because it contains not only Italian cultural news, but interviews with mainstream bands like the Stone Temple Pilots and reviews of popular international movies like Amelie. In a November 2001 response to Antonio Maglio's article on the legacy of East/West antagonism left by the Popes' Crusades, one anglophone reader wrote, "Thank you for your ongoing historic look at the deep chasm that exists today-something apparently the other papers around town have forgotten or not bothered to mention." The rest of Tandem's audience is made up of second-generation Italian-Canadians, who, although assimilated, are not completely detached from the immigrant experience of their parents. They witness their parents' struggles and, in most cases, live with their parents' steadfast grip on the past. In a typical Italian-Canadian household with parents of the first generation, offspring still aren't allowed to leave home until married and some other modern issues are also taboo. Recently, Tandem ran a piece on the Italian gay awareness group Avanti. Readers posting messages on Tandem's website site were divided: one thought it was a good start, one said it was too little, too late, and one said that it was unnecessary altogether.

When the Corriere published the letter of a 21-year-old Italian gay man frightened of revealing his sexuality to his family, it sparked an important debate. Both proponents and opponents of this type of discussion voiced their opinions on a CHIN radio show, moderated by Nicaso and prominent community spokesperson Father Gianni Carparelli, that furthered the debate. Nicaso says that taboo issues must be dealt with despite claims that such pieces expose the community to the kind of porcheria (smut) infecting the rest of society. It's precisely these pieces that demystified taboo subjects in the past, according to Nicaso, like the Mafia and the problem of drug abuse among young Italian-Canadians. And it's these kinds of pieces that the Corriere should do more of despite its audience's reservations.

The Corriere and Tandem are targeted to niche markets that big advertisers have often avoided in the past. That's why Multimedia has set up a rep house called Multicom Media Services to attract more blue-chip advertisers to its smaller publications. MMS will do this by providing the research necessary to convey to advertisers that when the various media of the ethnic press are combined, they represent a huge demographic with deep pockets. The entire ethnic press form what Iannuzzi refers to as the "New Mainstream," made up of "cosmopolitans with a 'citizens of the world' attitude." Flowing out of the vision of a "New Mainstream" is the Corriere's intention to expand in October. Iannuzzi plans to launch a split-run edition for cities in western provinces with large concentrations of Italian-Canadians, such as Edmonton and Vancouver. The Corriere serving Ontario and Montreal will contain more news from the west, but still serve the needs of the eastern Italian population. The Corriere now employs stringers in Montreal, and Nicaso says they will hire more writers in southern Ontario and Montreal to cover news.

Now is the perfect time for the Corriere's directors to step back and look at their paper with a critical eye to see if the organization can live up to the New Mainstream's expectations. Until Tandem arrived, the only publication geared to younger Italian-Canadians was the quarterly eyetalian, started by Nicholas Bianchi, Pino Esposito, and Teresa Tiano in 1993, and ended by financial problems and its editors' contradictory visions for the magazine's future contents, in 1999. "Our interest was high art," says Bianchi. "There wasn't anything articulating a critical perspective, which was the major impetus to start our magazine. Plus we were naive." Before launching Tandem, the Corriere carried an ad containing a mock-up of the soon-to-be-launched supplement. But the articles and bylines in the Tandem prototype were photocopies of an issue of eyetalian. Iannuzzi blames the mistake on an overanxious employee who had just poured contents of eyetalian as dummy text into the format of the prototype, creating friction between eyetalian and the Corriere. The Corriere printed a retraction soon after.

Iannuzzi says that Tandem was not inspired by eyetalian magazine. The differences between the two magazines are easy to see: eyetalian dealt more with the identity crisis of second-generation Italian-Canadians, and with certain articles, such as one about Woodbridge teens putting fashion above education, it was critical of the Italian-Canadian community. On the other hand, Tandem's sole purpose is to present entertainment and news to those who "have an affinity for things Italian."

But the tendency is still to go with the easy sell. When La Repubblica was added to the Corriere during the World Cup in 1998, it gained a whole new audience: first generation Italian-Canadians who could read in-depth news coverage and analysis of world events, including soccer. It brought the Corriere an overall increase in circulation of 16 percent. For Italians, soccer is the only subject more certain to get people yelling than politics. "It's a way of life," says Nicola Sparano, the section's editor. "We are attached to soccer because of our youth spent in Italy." And in 1982, Italy's victory at the World Cup united Italian-Canadians, with each other and with non-Italians. The Italian flag was flown over Toronto City Hall and thousands joined in the dizzying celebrations in "Little Italy." Before this happened, many Italian-Canadians would deny their heritage. But after the victory, and when St. Clair West, between Dufferin and Lansdowne, was renamed Corso Italia, Italians felt they could openly express their pride. In serving up a large portion of soccer, the Corriere uses a potent symbol of the first generation to unify its audience, yet in some ways soccer eclipses its other editorial content.

Like soccer, the Roman Catholic church has been a profound unifier in the Italian community. And with the Corriere taking over the pulpit, publishing a two-page Saturday section called Chiesa 2000, or Church 2000, the Corriere reaches regular churchgoers who aren't regular Corriere readers. The series of articles on the Roman Catholic church in Toronto, written by priests, is what Corriere national editor Paola Bernardini calls more publicità (advertising) than editorial content, but Nicaso defends the section. "The Roman Catholic church of Toronto had a monthly newspaper, La Parola [The Word]. When Padre Pollo, the editor who gave a voice to all the Catholics of Toronto, passed away, we thought, 'We should give a voice to the Catholic public of Toronto.'" Three thousand copies of the Saturday edition have been distributed to 28 Catholic parishes weekly since March 2001. Single sales of that edition also went up by 1,800, for an overall increase in circulation of almost 18 percent.

Another common denominator for Italian-Canadians is fighting the Mafia stereotype. Nicaso's 1992 reportage on the murders of two magistrates in Italy led to the first anti-Mafia vigil held in Toronto. Five thousand Canadians of Italian origin held candles at the mass. "I was very proud because for the first time we broke the silence," says Nicaso. "With one voice we said no to the Mafia." In 1999, he wrote a 22-article series on the various Mafia proliferating within Canada's borders. His investigative series is the paragon of the Corriere's reportage, but since the series ended three years ago, the Corriere has not published others like it. Yet sales went up while it was running. Nicaso says he has not been able to continue his investigation due to his double duty as writer and co-editor at Corriere, with little time for this kind of in-depth reporting.

Others have proven their talents in the Corriere, but don't always get the chance to showcase them. Antonio Maglio is a freelance writer whose work appears in both the Corriere and Tandem. Usually he writes a standing feature called "Storie di italiani" about long-dead achievers like Marconi and da Vinci, but recently he completed a 33-interview series on what it means to be Italian-Canadian. Ambitious and thorough discussions with Italian scholars, journalists, and government officials yielded thought-provoking quotes from both interview subjects and the Corriere's readers. Dara Kotnik Mancini, an Italian journalist, commented that Italian-Canadian writers of the first and second generation must move beyond focusing on the immigrant experience and explore other avenues of expressing their culture. Pasquale Verdicchio, founding member of the Association of Italian Canadian Writers, said that he awaits an Italian press that speaks on the community's cultural needs, aspirations, and the desire "to know and to know oneself." The responses to Maglio's series imply that readers are also waiting for a more provocative Italian press. One reader dismissed the series itself as more of a commercial for the interview subjects than a true debate. But another wrote: "It makes me sad to think that we are ahead of our times in all matters of life but that we are unable to analyze our weaknesses. In conclusion, what does it mean to be italocanadese or italocosmopolitan?"

Nicaso and Maglio are not the only ones who don't get to strut their journalistic stuff very often in the Corriere. Political editor Angelo Persichilli has interviewed the likes of Defence Minister Art Eggleton and Finance Minister Paul Martin for the Corriere, but his commentary is usually confined to the Hill Times, "Canada's Politics and Government Newsweekly." On September 21, 2001, Persichilli discussed with Derrik de Kerckhove, director of the McLuhan Program of Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, the media's role in fuelling the war fever that broke out after September 11.

Besides employing award-winning journalists who are recognized beyond the Italian community, the paper's connections to the roots of the community produce some of its best stories. With its ties to the Italian press and Italian government, the Corriere was able to break the news of Gaetano Amodeo, an Italian mobster living in Canada despite the Italian government's repeated attempts to have him face murder charges in Italy. In March 2001, armed with details from the Corriere, federal opposition members lambasted the Liberals for not deporting him.

Perhaps the most controversial breaking story the Corriere ever published was that of Italian doctor Luigi Di Bella and his contentious cancer treatment. Despite Nicaso's belief that the paper remained neutral on the treatment's efficacy, up to three pages a day were often devoted to Di Bella's struggle to legitimize his cure. The paper's giddiness at Di Bella's visit to Canada coincided with the formation of the Pro-Di Bella Association, founded by Giancarlo Florio, a reader whose mother was diagnosed with cancer during the Corriere's Di Bella coverage. A public service announcement appeared in the February 12, 1998, issue, stating, "[Florio's] objective, like ours, is to succeed in bringing to Canada the protocols of the Italian physiologist. Write to us, write to him. United we shall succeed."

"Our battle was to give a fair clinical test to this hypothetical cure," says Nicaso. "We never said it's the right cure. When talking about cancer, the best thing to do is not to sell false hope."

An estimated 100 Torontonians flocked to Italy for the miracle cure. The Di Bella debate ended when Canadian and Italian doctors discredited Di Bella, after monitoring his trial tests of the drug in Italy. Di Bella then claimed that the Italian doctors did not use the proper dosages and all of the necessary ingredients, thus botching the treatment's efficacy. The Corriere reported last year that the octogenarian is still trying to legitimize his treatment after closing up shop due to his frustrations with the former Italian government. And if the Italian media in Canada follow through on his trials and tribulations, they will no doubt have an audience that is eager for the news; during the Corriere's nine months of coverage, single-copy sales went up by close to five percent.

The Di Bella story grew with the support of the Corriere's readers, indicating a bias on both the paper's part and its audience. And in the case of everyday biases, the paper does not actively seek to eradicate the more pernicious associations it makes, although unintentionally. When I mention to Dan Iannuzzi that in a story about a murder in Toronto's Regent Park, the Corriere gave the victim's race, he says, "[The mainstream media] start off with the fact of trying to be politically correct. It's his background, and I don't see anything wrong in mentioning that. It's not to say, 'Well, here is another black man who's been killed,' no."

When I ask if someone could read it as another black man was killed in Regent Park, Iannuzzi says, "No, you'd have to spell it out. It's the way you write the story." Iannuzzi says there aren't ghettos in Canada, just people with ghetto mentalities. He's focused on reaching the New Mainstream, younger Italians, or Italian-speaking Somalis, for that matter, who he wants to start reading the paper. As Nicaso says, "The Star only covers the Italian community when we celebrate the victory of our international team during the World Cup; otherwise they don't pay attention to the ethnic community." If there's more to Italian-Canadian life than soccer, the Catholic church, and nostalgia for village festivals, it's up to the Corriere Canadese to show it to the rest of the Canadian media.