Italy is to issue a special stamp marking the 100th anniversary Wednesday of the birth of the widely accepted doyen of 20th-century Italian journalism, Indro Montanelli, who died in 2001.
The 60-cent stamp shows Montanelli wearing a typically piercing expression with an open newspaper on his desk and his trademark Olivetti 22 typewriter in the foreground.
''This stamp pays tribute to a great Italian, whose unique and undying style represents a model for current practitioners and the younger generation,'' said Poste Italiane President Giovanni Ialongo.
''Montanelli was one of the foremost figures of the 20th century. The journalist, the intellectual, the historian and the writer recounted the various stages of our country's social, political, cultural evolution''.
Tuscan-born Montanelli, a natural contrarian and liberal conservative whose articles were models of concision and clarity, died in July 2001 at the age of 92.
Perhaps the best-known of Italy's journalists, he was famous for evocative travel reportage, probing interviews and pithy editorials, written with an unusual lack of frills.
Montanelli, who was kneecapped by the Red Brigades, left the Corriere della Sera in the late 1970s, irked by a perceived leftish drift, to found Il Giornale with backing from Silvio Berlusconi, a Milanese construction magnate who was set to build a media empire.
After Italy's rightwing parties were crippled in the Bribesville scandals of the early 1990s, Montanelli strongly advised Berlusconi not to enter politics and fell out with his patron and soon-to-be premier after refusing to forcibly back him in print.
Montanelli went on to found another, independent newspaper, La Voce, but the venture folded after about a year and he returned to become letters page editor at Corriere.
He is credited with boosting a love for history among Italians with many works, on the Greeks, Romans and modern-day Italy, all still in print.
