Semiotics of the Newsstand Extracted from "Edicola Italiana", the first free press by nss edicola

It is well known the aphorism by Hegel according to which reading the newspaper is the modern man’s morning prayer. More precisely, it refers to a form of realistic prayer addressed, it is not entirely clear to whom, in the hope of giving shape and order, for at least one day, to the chaos of the world. We live in days in which the agents of chaos are hegemonic.

And to read newspapers and tame chaos, newsstands are needed to sell them. The newsstand [from Lat. aedicŭla “small temple”, diminutive of aedes “temple”].

According to Treccani it is

1. a. A small temple or chapel with a statue inside, in the center. b. A small architectural structure, usually consisting of two columns topped by a pediment, often attached to a larger building, serving as ornament and protection for sacred images, commemorative representations, inscriptions, or niches and windows (aedicule niches, windows).

2. A structure made of iron, wood, or masonry, placed on a street or public square, in a station hall or elsewhere, intended for the sale of newspapers, magazines, and other publications.

For at least a century, the newsstand has been a perfect semiotic machine: a threshold. It was not a shop, because one did not really enter it; it was not a square, because one did not linger there for long. It was a liminal device, a boundary space, in which the citizen encountered the materialized form of the Encyclopedia — not the one contained in a volume, but the one in the collective mind of an interpreting community.