Sergio Lepri (24 September 1919 – 20 January 2022) was an Italian journalist and essayist.
In 1945 he joined the editorial staff of the newspaper La Nazione del Popolo, organ of the Tuscan Committee of National Liberation. Here he practiced and in February 1946 he became a professional journalist. He continued to work as an editor in the Florentine newspaper, which in 1947 changed its title to “Mattino dell’Italia centrale”, then again in 1954 became Giornale del Mattino.
Under the direction of Ettore Bernabei Lepri he was special envoy to the United States and the Soviet Union and correspondent from Paris. He rose to the position of editor-in-chief.
In 1956 he was appointed spokesman for Amintore Fanfani, national secretary of the Christian Democrats, and in 1958-59 head of the Press Service of the Presidency of the Council with Fanfani as president.
In September 1960 he was hired by the ANSA news agency. Four months later he was already co-editor-in-chief. He was editor-in-chief from January 1962 to January 15, 1990. In the 1970s he created the agency’s digital news archive, the first in Europe.
From 1988 to 2004 Sergio Lepri was a professor at Luiss: he taught Information Language and Writing Techniques at the Higher School of Journalism of the Faculty of Political Science.
Married to Laura Tatò, he had three children: journalists Stefano, Paolo and Maria Maddalena.
Sergio Lepri publishes his latest literary effort “la mia vita da giornalista” (2022) All around editions edited by Silvana Mazzocchi and the introduction by Giancarlo Tartaglia.
Sergio Lepri leaves the scene, but remains his decisive imprint in the world of Italian journalism and in a form of European culture that he himself had helped to create. There remain the wise, courageous ideas and words that knew how to question things in depth, opening up new horizons of meaning.
The years passed, but Sergio Lepri did not really age, he continued to be young in the curiosity of his approach to the world, in the audacity of his questions, in his way of questioning the present. He leaves us the depth of his gaze and his approach to all the great themes of existence.
From this book we understand why Sergio Lepri was always prepared, thanks of course to his private readings so pregnant and educational. We understand from these pages that Lepri was a postmodern Enlightenment, a contemporary rationalist. Just as it is concluded that Sergio Lepri had the courage and merit to be an independent thinker and out of the chorus, out of the flock, while never posing as a philosopher, avoiding technicalities and sophistry too abstruse.
It was not his fault to make an opinion, even if he claimed that public opinion had long since died or at least in recent times no longer received.
“My life as a journalist”, therefore, must be read because everyone can read it, because it is not difficult to understand, but above all because it has told and commented in a very witty and honest intellectual way the events of our country.
This is no small matter, indeed it is a very rare quality and we must acknowledge that.