Eugenio Scalfari is a journalist, doyen of the Italian press, Italian politician and essayist born in 1924. He headed L'Espresso from 1963 to 1976, when he left to found La Repubblica, which in just a few years became the number one daily newspaper in the country. A Socialist Partymember of parliament from 1968 to 1972, he quit as the head of La Repubblica in 1996, to write a weekly column. It also pens a section in L'Espresso, alternating with Umberto Eco.