Donna Moderna
Italian women’s weekly. The first issue, on the stands March 8th 1988, sold 600,000 copies. After a few weeks, it settled at 350,000 copies and later reached more than 500,000. With 92 pages, columns that were short and others very short, often in side boxes, and written in simple, clear, almost elementary prose, the new magazine, published by Mondadori, was launched with the support of an advertising campaign costing almost 4 billion liras. With Edvige Bernasconi as editor-in-chief, and inspired by a French weekly that was selling more than 1 million copies, it featured useful services and news on classic themes: beauty, fashion, interior decor, health, and current events. At a critical moment for women’s magazines, Donna Moderna was aimed at the still intact group of the lower middle-class, the so-called B Target, which until then had been the undisputed territory of gossip magazines such as Bolero and Novella 2000. After one year under Giuseppe Botteri, the magazine was back in the hands of Bernasconi. In the years that followed, the weekly tried to soften its excessively popular characteristics, winning higher-level readers as well. In February 1993, for the first time, circulation surpassed 1,000,000 copies. At the end of 1997, the circulation was about 600,000 copies. Today, it is led by Patrizia Avoledo, assisted with intelligence and professionalism by Cipriana Dall’Orto.