The Nordio newspaper

Rome. Literature shields you from life’s indignities. Journalism, from those of politics. This has always been true for many. Today, it is also true for the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio. The Minister of Justice who finally finds solace in the pages of Anatole France. His elixir. But who now looks not only to writers, but also to journalists.

In Via Arenula, after all, they know that books are merely a sticking plaster and are not enough to heal the wounds after four years in parliament. So today a newspaper arrives – written and conceived in those very rooms – destined to become the ministry’s house organ. It will be Nordio’s Il Fatto, or the Nordio Quotidiano. The online balm following the shattered referendum, the dethroned ‘zarin’s’, the thoroughly rotten DAP, the favours requested (and not granted), and even the insolence of Sigfrido, who accuses the bibliophile minister of being nothing more than a wine-lover devoted to Uruguayan ranches. It will be the ministry’s final act, so they say, as well as the man’s refuge. Featuring Voltaire, Montesquieu, and even a Montanellian column entitled ‘Le stanze di Carlo’.

At the ministry, however, they’ve been mulling this over for months now. They’re thinking of Sabino Cassese, a household name in newspapers and on TV, who is now set to become the leading writer for "Il Fatto" (Nordiano). Although, alongside Italian legal expertise – Cassese, that is – the minister is being advised to add that inevitable touch of pop culture that makes any newspaper great. Will they put "Il Fatto" in a skirt? Perhaps. His team have devised several lighter sections: Culture and Society. Little columns which, after so much infighting, instil grace (rather than justice). Among the website’s sections, then, here is one dedicated to legal dramas – TV series set in courtrooms. You can’t quite picture it – can you? – Carlo Nordio scouring Netflix in search of lawyers and prosecutors grappling with investigations and ethical dilemmas… No. Yet man does not live by legal tomes alone (let alone the ministry’s staff: the site’s very first visitors). We’ll therefore be recounting the exploits of Harvey Specter, the high-flying New York lawyer and star of "Suits", always clad in bespoke suits. Or the romantic and legal intrigues of "The Good Wife" (a touch of pop culture, and more besides). After years of trouble, tensions will ease through colour and football: articles on cinema and sports law.

Nordio, it was said, will then respond directly to readers – who, we hope, will not be limited to employees – and will do so in the style of Montanelli. Not least because "La Voce" – his voice – is now that of Francesco Specchia, who was a film critic and brilliant editor at Indro’s newspaper.

However, the focus of *Il Fatto* – and of *Nordio* – will also be on prisons. Just yesterday, the minister met informally with Gianni Alemanno to discuss “stepping up efforts on the rehabilitation of prisoners”. And who knows – perhaps the author of in-depth articles on prison overcrowding might well be none other than the former mayor of Rome, now an adviser to Roberto Vannacci.

One thing is certain, however: after so much hardship, relief is on the way. Nordio returns to his "Giardino di Epicuro", together with France. And thus to the simple pleasures that writing brings him.

Of course, if he’d won back in March, his dreams would have been quite different… If he’d secured victory in the referendum, he’d have been dreaming of a view of Colle… But history, as we know, isn’t made of ‘ifs’. History isn’t made of ‘buts’, but journalism certainly is.