Visionary. Pioneer. Genius. A man capable of bridging time and space. Time, because his entrepreneurial efforts (with Video On Line, for example) defined the boundary between before and after: since then, with the internet, the world has changed. Space, because in that very moment, his move brought the world closer together, bridging distances that had previously been insurmountable. This is Nichi Grauso, the man, the entrepreneur, who passed away almost a year ago, leaving behind "a legacy that belongs to everyone, without copyright" (words recorded in a video by his grandson Elia).

Celebration

His memory was remembered during the opening of the new academic year at Aristan University, the University of Happiness, attended by many representatives of the island's business, political, and cultural worlds. It was a lecture-cum-conversation with those who knew him, had the privilege of working with him, and were his friends. "A very important person even beyond the island's borders," began Rector Filippo Martinez, a great friend of Grauso. "Nichi was an extraordinarily sensitive 'animal,' capable of capturing things exactly as they were happening: the birth of Radiolina, the first private radio station in Sardinia and among the first in all of Italy, then Videolina, the first wireless radio station in Sardinia. He was also an innovator in print media, with the launch of the website unionesarda.it, the second in the world after the Washington Post. He was always on the cutting edge."

That brisk pace, which characterized Grauso's entrepreneurial life, is well remembered by Sergio Zuncheddu, publisher for twenty-seven years of the L'Unione Sarda group, which Grauso himself acquired. "An operation that began one day in April 1999 in a Milanese trattoria." It was a period in which national publishers had shone a spotlight on L'Unione Sarda: Romiti for Corriere della Sera and Caracciolo for La Repubblica. In the end, Zuncheddu, by purchasing it, kept it in Sardinia. "Immediately after buying the newspaper, Nichi called me to the house next to the old L'Unione headquarters on Viale Regina Elena and informed me that the paper benefited," every year, "from 8 billion old lire in subsidies under the publishing law. 'If you want, I'll tell you how to keep receiving them,' he said." He was also generous, then. "But I told him I wasn't interested. He looked at me and said, 'Are you crazy?' Maybe so, but I'm convinced that a company must stand up and survive by competing in the market. For me, this is a company; it doesn't need to be subsidized by the state to exist. However," he added, "I once wondered whether he or I was right. Because, when I was unjustly prosecuted for eight years, then acquitted because the fact was not proven, I wondered if it wouldn't have been better to accept this state's recommendation regarding those contributions. Unione Sarda would now have €108 million in public funds. Money I knowingly gave up."

Precursor

If there's one criticism everyone leveled at Nichi Grauso, it was his constant foresight. "He moved fast, sometimes too fast," recalled his lifelong friend Gianni Giugnini, Grauso's longtime advertiser. "He did extraordinary things," reiterated Sergio Zuncheddu. "Nichi had intelligence, creativity, and vision. But also courage: Video On Line, for example, was an extraordinary operation of global significance. Of course, if he had waited two or three years, without anticipating so much the timing of a revolution for which the world wasn't yet prepared, he would have become one of the richest entrepreneurs in the world," he added. A legacy, that of Video On Line, "copyright-free," as Grauso called it, later picked up by another Sicilian entrepreneur, Renato Soru, also in the audience at the inauguration of Aristan's academic year. "Video On Line was a project launched too early," added publisher Sergio Zuncheddu. "You have to do the right things, and he was doing them, but to make them work, you can't be too early or too late. Only at that precise moment can that idea, that project, work." That said, "Nichi was a special man," he continued. The problem was that "he wanted to do in ten days what should have taken a hundred," reiterated Gianni Onorato, a great friend of Grauso's since adolescence and the "father" of La Voce Sarda, the station founded in the late 1970s and later acquired by Grauso. "He was a loyal, reliable man with extraordinary entrepreneurial skills," he added. "He often bit off more than he could chew," recalls Michele Rossetti, the man who, with Grauso, created Radiolina and Videolina. "Video On Line was too far ahead of his time." "If I had to find a definition for Nichi, I would say his ability to always seek harmony with the people he worked with and the courage to explore uncharted territory," echoed Giugnini. "He was a man who didn't think of his own personal gain, but of the world's," recalled Antonangelo Liori, the last director of L'Unione Sarda appointed by Grauso. "And also the most decent person I've ever known."

The flight to Libya

In short, genius and madness combined, for everyone. "Like that time he called me at 3 a.m. to tell me he wanted to violate the UN air embargo on Libya because he wanted to free worker Marcello Sarritzu and his wife Isa Pizzettu, stranded in Tripoli for several months due to a legal and administrative dispute with the Libyan government. We organized everything and went with Vittorio Sgarbi and other friends and brought them back to Cagliari." It was April 1998, Martinez recalled in a video testimony of that feat that was broadcast on television all over the world. "Because Nichi was also this: a crazy, brilliant, visionary man. Always."

Mauro Madeddu

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