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This
profile considers Le Monde and Le Temps.
It covers -
introduction
Le Temps and its successor Le Monde
have served as France's newspapers of record - counterparts
to the Times in London, the New York Times,
the Sydney Morning Herald or the Age
in Australia.
Le Monde and Le Monde diplomatique
Le Monde was founded in November 1944 by Hubert
Beuve-Méry (1902-1989) as a national daily evening
newspaper that would be the "conscience of the nation"
and replace the venerable Le Temps. Beuve-Mery
appears to have been influenced by Emmanuel Mounier and
by the 'Uriage' movement centred around Pierre Dunoyer
de Segonzac, which also influenced the development of
the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA) established
in 1944.
As of 2003 Le Monde had a circulation of around
400,000, with accumulated losses of several million dollars.
In March 2005 the Le Monde board announced a recapitalization
agreement in which Spanish publisher Grupo PRISA
and French defense and media group Lagardere
SA would contribute €25 million each to a capital
increase alongside other potential new investors. As of
late 2007 Prisa had a 15% stake in Le Monde and Lagardère
a 17% stake.
The paper has traditionally valued its seriousness (arguably
centred on style rather than rigorous analysis and investigation),
with one advocate noting that
for
a long time it cherished an editorial practice of not
publishing any photographs to accompany articles! Layout
and the gray and thickly laid pages suggested excessive
seriousness, bordering on repulsion for many people.
Until
bailed out by business in 1994 it also emphasised its
independence - with an expectation that it would be self-sustaining
rather than reliant on the pockets of a rich parent (eg
Dassault) or subventions
from a particular interest, such as those received by
its precursor Le Temps.
Perry Anderson, in a 2004 lament for French Exceptionalism,
claimed
that Le Monde had formerly been
the
world's finest newspaper ... Under the austere regime
of Hubert Beuve-Méry, Paris enjoyed a daily whose
international coverage, political independence and intellectual
standards put it in a class by itself in the Western
press of the time. The New York Times, the
Times or the Frankfurter Allgemeine
were provincial rags by comparison.
He
went on to denounce it as
a
travesty of the daily created by Beuve-Méry:
shrill, conformist and parochial, increasingly made
in the image of its website, which assails the viewer
with more fatuous pop-ups and inane advertisements than
an American tabloid. The disgust that many of its own
readers, trapped by the absence of an alternative, feel
for what it has become was revealed when a highly uneven
polemic against the trio of managers who have debauched
it - Alain Minc, Edwy Plenel and Jean-Marie Colombani
- sold 200,000 copies, in the face of legal threats
against the authors, later withdrawn to avoid further
discomfiture of them in court.
La Face cachée du 'Monde' had for example
claimed that Le Monde's directors inflated the
paper's circulation figures, disguised the paper's financial
standing while concurrently attacking business people
who engage in financial malfeasance, and abused their
power to obtain "advantages that permit them to put
their accounts in a better position".
Historian Richard Vinen more acutely commented that
Libération
reads almost like a deliberate antithesis of Le
Monde and, as befits a gifted and spoiled youth,
it benefits from an extraordinary degree of indulgence.
Le Monde, which has been right about so many
important things (Stalinism in the 1940s; torture during
the Algerian war), is pilloried every time it falls
short of its own impossibly high standards.
associated
publications
Le Monde is the flagship publication of Groupe Le
Monde. The group includes
-
Le Monde diplomatique with a circulation of
around 120,000,
- weekly
news magazine Courrier international (175,000)
and
- bimonthly
Maniere de voir.
It
has a small stake in Swiss daily Le Temps (formed
through the 1998 merger of Le Nouveau Quotidien
and Le Journal de Genève) and controlled
by a Edipresse-Ringier
joint venture.
Le Monde diplomatique was founded by Beuve-Méry
in 1954 and gained a separate legal existence in 1995,
with Group Le Monde transferring a 49% stake to the Gunter
Holzmann Association.
The association includes the newspaper's employees and
the Le Monde diplomatique Friends Association - around
10,000 readers. It was established after Gunter Holzmann
announced a donation of US$1 million to ensure the paper's
legal independence. That ownership by a non-profit is
broadly similar to arrangements for A-Pressen,
PCM and the Guardian
Media Group.
Le Temps
Le
Temps was founded in 1861 by Auguste Nefftzer (1820-1874)
but is best associated with Adrien Hebrard (1833-1914).
Nefftzer was born in Colmar and began as a journalist
at the Courrier du Haut-Rhin, subsequently becoming
editor (and later manager) of the Paris daily La Presse.
With Charles Dollfus he founded La Nouvelle Revue
germanique (1858-1865), one of the more interesting
attempts to bridge the cultural gap between France and
Germany.
Prior to the 1940s Le Temps had become the French
daily newspaper of record, with a smaller circulation
but greater respect than Le Figaro. Like the
Times in London under the Astors it was not subsidized
by a stable of more popular publications and was thus
dependent on the largesse of wealthy investors. That led
to criticism that Le Temps was either a mouthpiece for
commercial interests - for example an embodiment of the
Mur d'Argent - or had been 'bought' by particular individuals
and organisations, such as the de Wendel and Schneider
steel-making interests.
Le Temps was underwhelmed by right wing radicalism
during the 1930s, in contrast to Coty's Le Figaro,
and de Wendel famously complained that France needed to
return to an 'apolitical' conservatism. It adopted a cautious
approach to Vichy but was increasingly captured after
1942. That capture resulted in refusal by the new government
to licence it after the Germans left Paris in 1944.
studies
Richard Barbrook's Media Freedom: The Contradictions
of Communications in the Age of Modernity (London:
Pluto Press 1995) and Marc Martin's Medias et journalistes
de la Republique (Paris: Editions Odile Jacob 1997)
consider the French regulatory environment and media concentration.
There is a more detailed account in the five volume Histoire
Générale de la Presse Française (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France 1969-1976) by Claude Bellanger, Jacques Godechot,
Pierre Guiral & Fernand Terrou. Raymond Kuhn's concise
The Media in France (London: Routledge 1995) is
also of particular value.
Le Monde's history is covered in Le Monde,
1944-1995 Histoire d'une entreprise de presse (Paris:
Le Monde Editions 1996) by Patrick Eveno, Le Monde
1944-1996, Histoire d'un journal, un journal dans l'histoire
(Paris: Plon 1996) by Jacques Thibau and Histoire
et idéologie du Journal Le Monde (Aachen:
Verlag Shaker 1993) by Annie Finkeldei.
For denunciations see Le Monde Tel Qu'il Est
(Paris: Plon 1976) by Michel Legris and La Face cachée
du 'Monde': Du contre-pouvoir aux abus de pouvoir
(Paris: Mille et Une Nuits 2004) by Pierre Péan
& Philippe Cohen. For the founder see Laurent Greilsamer's
Hubert Beuve Mery (Paris: Fayard) and Richard
Vinen's Bourgeois Politics in France, 1945-1951
(Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1995). Background about
Dunoyer de Segonzac is provided by John Hellman's The
Knight-Monks of Vichy France: Uriage, 1940-1945 (Montreal:
McGill-Queen's Uni Press 1997).
Positioning vis a vis Libération is highlighted
in works noted in the separate profile for that newspaper,
including the The Long March of the French Left
(London: Macmillan 1981) by Richard Johnson.
For Nefftzer see René Martin's Le vrai visage
de l'Alsace. La vie d'un grand journaliste: Auguste Nefftzer
fondateur de la Revue Germanique et du Temps (Besançon:
Editions Camponovo 1953).
For the Wendels see Pierre Fritsch's Les Wendel, Rois
de l'Acier Français (Paris: Laffont 1976),
Jean Jeanneny's more searching François de Wendel
en République: l'argent et le pouvoir, 1914-1940
(Paris: Seuil 1976), The Wendel Family: 'Affectio
Societatis': The Story of A French Industrial Dynasty
(1704-1976) (Fontainebleau: INSEAD 1999) by Christine
Blondel & Ludo Van der Heyden and La banque Seillière-Demachy:
Une dynastie familiale au centre du négoce, de
la finance et des arts 1798-1998 (Paris: éditions
Perrin 1999) edited by Raymond Dartevelle.
chronology
1858 La Nouvelle Revue germanique founded by
Auguste Nefftzer & Charles Dollfus
1861 Le Temps established by Nefftzer
1865 La Nouvelle Revue germanique closes
1904 Jaures founds L'Humanité
1920 PCF gains control of L'Humanité
1944 Le Temps refused licence (and thus suppressed)
for collaboration
1944 Hubert Beuve-Mery founds Le Monde
1954 founds Le Monde diplomatique
1973 JP Sartre & Serge July found Libération
1988 Le Monde group launches Manière de
voir as quarterly magazine
1994 business sector bails out Le Monde
1995 establishment of Holzmann Association
1996 SA Investissements Press comes under control of Pathé
1996 Le Monde diplomatique becomes separate company
51% owned by Group Le Monde
1997 Manière de voir becomes bimonthly
2001 Le Monde buys Sandoz Family Foundation's 20% stake
in Geneva daily Le Temps
2003 20% stake in Le Temps reduced to 5%, with
82% held by Edipresse-Ringier
joint venture
2005 Prisa and Lagardère take stakes in Le Monde
2007 sells regional newspaper division to Sud
Ouest group for €90m
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