Dead Ernesto Assante, the music that revolved around Repubblica

Italian music journalists fall into two broad categories: those who think they are the rock stars and those who are inspired by Ernesto Assante, Repubblica's historical signature, radio presenter, critic, blogger, technology expert, great disseminator of musical knowledge and who knows how many other things, who died in Rome at the age of 66 from a cursed stroke. A passionate scholar of rock history, curious about everything new, always helpful to those who worked in the industry, affectionate and welcoming to colleagues: today, if you write about music, 'pulling one's weight' is almost part of the package, but Assante was always of a different breed. And readers and listeners had to hear him, as well as feel passion and competence in everything he did. That is why, now that he is gone, it is all one long goodbye on social media, from those who knew him in person and those who knew him anyway.

Born in Naples in 1958 and educated in Rome, where he attended the Giulio Cesare, a high school of politicians and singer-songwriters, he was essentially a boy of the 1970s, of the '77 Movement. His baptism of fire was free radio - Roma International Sound, Radio Blu - but also the Quotidiano dei Lavoratori, a newspaper of Avanguardia Operaia, and the Manifesto, for which he made his debut as a music critic. In 1976, Eugenio Scalfari founded Repubblica, changing the Italian news landscape. Three years later, Ernesto Assante began writing for it, becoming - for the topics he covered - one of the architects of that change. Because Repubblica, as the progressive daily newspaper it once was, put entertainment reporting and cultural criticism at the centre of its news offering. Because spectacles need culture, while culture does not need spectacles. Assante is part of that revolution and starts out as a collaborator to become, within a few years, editor-in-chief.

In the 1980s, he was one of the main animators of that marvellous space of musical popularisation that was Raistereonotte, the late-night marathons of Radio Rai devised by Pierluigi Tabasso in which a new generation of listeners learned to call David Bowie and Fela Kuti, Frank Zappa and the Talking Heads. And in the meantime he does not disdain to collaborate with television, whether it be on some edition of Domenica In or Doc, Renzo Arbore's legendary programme hosting the international music elite. In the 1990s he founded Musica, a weekly in-depth magazine attached to Repubblica that any self-respecting music lover cannot fail to include in his or her information diet. These were the years in which his partnership with Gino Castaldo was strengthened: together, for decades, here in Italy they would be the dioscuri of rock popularisation, in the pieces they co-wrote, on the radio on Capital, in books such as Blues, jazz, rock, pop - The American twentieth century, in the memorable rock history lessons on the eternal dualism Beatles-Rolling Stones.

Ernesto soon realised that there was another revolution taking place, a change at least as historic as music was in the 1960s and 1970s: it was called the Internet. He thus became one of the first Italian journalists to become passionate about technology topics, he immediately inhabited the web, he was the creator of Computer Valley and Computers, Internet and Other and the editor of McLink and Kataweb. A prolific author and cultural animator full of ideas, he also collaborated with weeklies such as Epoca, L'Espresso, Rolling Stone and recently with Rockol, edited some pop and rock entries for the Treccani and taught at university. He did a thousand things, but he was above all a journalist for Repubblica: that was and has remained his home for all this time. Now that he is gone, he leaves a wife, two daughters, an enormous void in those who grew up reading him and an even greater lesson for anyone who, after him, will dare to do this job. Which is a beautiful profession, as long as there is competence, passion and that spirit of service that so often those in our profession forget at home.