He has been described as 'a prophet of contemporary journalism back in the 1990s'.
[1] Born in Naples, Assante started his career as a collaborator of some Roman private radios and as a music journalist for the newspapers Quotidiano dei lavoratori [it] and Il manifesto.
[2][3] Starting from 1978, he was a long-time collaborator of La Repubblica, for which he served as editor-in-chief, and also founded its official website repubblica.it and directed the Kataweb portal.
[2] Later, he collaborated with numerous publications, notably Rolling Stone, L'Espresso and Rockol,[4] wrote numerous books, and was also a radio and television writer and occasional presenter, a festival artistic director, and a lecturer at the Sapienza University of Rome.
[2][3] Assante died of heart attack on 26 February 2024, at the age of 66.