L'Unità to suspend publication Friday

(ANSA) - Rome, July 29 - Italy's former Communist daily L'Unità announced Tuesday it was suspending publication from August 1 as staff accused shareholders of washing their hands of journalists and printers working on the historic newspaper.
    "End of the ride. After three months of struggle, they succeeded in killing L'Unità," the newspaper's journalists said in a statement issued by the title's union branch.
    "The shareholders weren't able to agree on different plans that would have at least saved the newspaper," they said.
    "This is extremely grave, putting at risk some 80 jobs at a time of serious crisis in the press".
    Premier Matteo Renzi has pledged to try and save L'Unità, which has gone bankrupt four times in 20 years and currently has estimated debts of 39 million euros. Founded by Marxist, anti-Fascist philosopher Antonio Gramsci in 1924, L'Unità has struggled to survive since the end of the Cold War and the decision by the former Italian Communist Party (PCI) to change its name to the Democratic Party with hardline leftists forming the breakaway Communist Refoundation party with its own newspaper Liberazione.
    A statement by the national journalists' union FNSI called for last-minute efforts to allow the newspaper to resume publication, noting that its employees had not been paid for three months due its financial woes.
    Cuts in government subsidies, a decline in advertising for the press during the recession, competition from Internet and television, as well as new competition have contributed to the crisis at L'Unità, industry experts say.