Cronaca Vera should not be confused with Cronaca nera.
| Editor: | Giuseppe Biselli |
| Editor Title: | Editor-in-chief |
| Frequency: | Weekly |
| Category: | News magazine |
| Publisher: | New Message Uno S.r.l. |
| Firstdate: | 1969 |
| Country: | Italy |
| Based: | Piazza Erculea 5 Milano 20122 |
| Language: | Italian |
| Website: | Cronaca Vera |
| Issn: | 1125-5544 |
Cronaca Vera (Italian for True Chronicles) is a weekly, tabloid news magazine, published in Italy.
The magazine was founded in 1969 by entrepreneur Sergio Garassini, who had launched the monthly erotic magazine Kent.[1] Garassini appointed Antonio Perria, crime author and former ABC editor who had also worked at L'Unità as a crime reporter, to be the periodical's first editor-in-chief.[2] The graphic illustrator and comics artist Maurizio Bovarini[3] was entrusted with the design of Cronaca, while he also, in the same year, started working as editor at the Italian edition of Hara-Kiri magazine.[4]
The magazine is printed in "low-quality paper" and costs one euro. An issue typically contains from about a dozen up to fifteen reports ranging from local news to crime, from stories of everyday violence to controversies. It contains columns such as Il Racconto Giallo/Nero (Tales of Yellow/Black)[5] with crime stories, or I Misteri del Sesso (The Mysteries of Sex), where readers write in about their sexual problems. Its titles, in "jarring yellows and reds," are considered by Vice magazine to be "wonderful."[6]
Cronaca Vera is considered "a lurid tabloid" by some critics,[7] although its covers are for others "unmissable",[8] while for the mayoralty of Ribera, Agrigento, the magazine is "prestigious."[9]
In the mid-1970s, Cronaca was selling approximately 600 thousand issues every week. Editor-in-chief Giuseppe Biselli contends that the magazine receives "approximately 20,000 letters" from readers every year.[10] He agrees with the finding that it is the most popular publication among prison inmates.[10]