| Daily
Newspapers and Sunday newspapers in France |
Compared to the press in the UK, French
newspapers
play a considerably smaller role in the life of the nation. The French
newspaper industry is characterised by a lack of mass-market national
dailies, a lack of the kind of heavyweight Sunday newspapers that one
finds in English-speaking countries, and above all the absence of the
kind of frivolous and muck-raking daily tabloid press that is so
omnipresent in the UK. After these factors have been taken into
account, the spread and scope of publications is as varied as anywhere.
Almost all French newspapers
have lost readers and circulation since 2000, and for some, such as Le Monde, Libération
or France Soir,
this decline – due to the rise of free newspapers, the
economic downturn, and the Internet – has
threatened or is threating their survival.
French dailies
( "Les quotidiens")
a) The quality dailies:
France
has three major national quality
dailies, Le Monde, Le
Figaro, and Libération;
between them, they target the same kind of educated reader market as
serious quality papers – the so-called
"broadsheets"
– such as the Times,
the Independent
and the Guardian
in the UK, or the New
York Times, the Boston
Globe or the San
Francisco Chronicle
in the USA. There is however one major difference; French quality
dailies are on the whole more intellectual and more left of centre than
their counterparts in the main English-speaking countries.
- Le Figaro,
the best-selling of the three, is the only one that is clearly a
conservative newspaper. It is also the oldest of France's daily papers,
and was founded in 1826. It tends to appeal to well-off educated
readers, people with good jobs, particularly in the private sector. It
is at the same time the closest French equivalent of the Daily Telegraph and
of the Times;
yet its average circulation in 2008 was only 320,000 - only
about 40% of the figure for Britain's Daily Telegraph.
- Le Monde, founded in
1944, is the paper of the establishment, though a paper that is closer
in its political positioning to the Guardian
in the UK, than it is to the Times.
It is the preferred daily of French intellectuals, civil servants,
academics, particularly those in the higher echelons. It is the
newspaper that gives the most detailed coverage of world events and of
politics, and a paper which is a major forum for political and
intellectual debate and discussion. Being the newspaper of the
establishment, it is also the newspaper that best reflects French
opinion on international issues, and the French daily that is most read
outside France. It is an evening paper.
- Libération
was founded in 1973 by Jean-Paul Sartre and other left-wing
intellectuals, as a newspaper for the '68 generation. Initially it was
a newspaper of the far-left, though not one that toed the line of any
political party. Over the years, as its readership grew older,
"Libé" matured into a more centre-left newspaper, similar in
many ways to Britain's "Guardian".
It's centrist position became more pronounced after it was saved from
collapse by Edouard de Rothschild. However, Rothschild's involvement
led to severe tensions among editors and journalists, and the newspaper
is still struggling, with an average circulation now below 140,000
copies a day.
- This is much better
than a fourth well-known daily, l'Humanité
– founded by the early socialist leader Jean
Jaurès.in 1904. From 1920 to 1999, L'Humanité
was the unofficial, then official, newspaper of the French Communist
Party; since 1999, it has been editorially independent, but is still
largely written, produced and promoted by Communist Party members or
sympathisers. Its circulation is about 49,000.
b)
Other
main national dailies.
- L'Equipe:
A newspaper devoted almost exclusively to sport, L'Equipe is one of the
best selling of France's national dailies, with a circulation of about
310,000 – not far off that of le Figaro.
- Le
Parisien / Aujourd'hui en France : These mid-market
tabloids, one for Paris,
the other for the rest of France, are more or less the same newspaper
with different regional editions: they appeal to the same kind of
readership as Britain's Daily
Mail, or America's
USA Today,
and pay plenty of attention to "people" and the glitterati, as well as
anecdotal news. Between them, they have a circulation of over 500,000,
which would make them the best-selling national title in France if they
were a single title.
- Les
Echos: France's equivalent of the Financial Times or
the Wall Street Journal,
a major national financial and economics daily, with an average
circulation of about 120,000. Similar to Les Echos, but with a smaller
readership, is La Tribune.
- France
Soir: Once
the most popular paper in France, France Soir, a mid-market evening
paper, seems to be in terminal decline, and has an average
circulation of less than 25,000..... compared to over a million in the
1950's, its heyday.
- La
Croix: though by tradition a Catholic daily, La Croix has
in recent years become much more of a mainstream newspaper. With a
circulation of over 90,000 in 2008, it was one of the rare French daily
papers to have increased its readership since the start of the century.
- Metro:
the
leading French free daily, similar to editions of the same title in
other countries. Over 300,000 copies distributed in the ten major French cities.
c)
Regional
dailies
More people in France read regional dailies than national ones, and
some of the regional dailies have very big readerships indeed.
- Ouest
France,
published in Rennes, is the biggest-selling daily in France, with a
circulation of almost 800,000. It is sold, with area variations, in the
regions of Brittany, Normandy,
and Pays de la Loire
- Sud
Ouest: regional daily published in Bordeaux, and
distributed throughout Aquitaine,
and in parts of Poitou-Charentes
and Midi-Pyrénées.
With a circulation of over 300,000, it is one of the largest French
regional dailies.
- Les
Dépêches du Midi: published in
Toulouse and sold mostly in the Midi-Pyrénées
region, this big-selling regional daily (almost 200,000 copies)
reflects the centre-left "radical" political tradition which is
strongly anchored in this region.
- L'Est
Républicain; regional daily published in Nancy,
covering the regions of Lorraine and Franche-Comté;
circulation over 200,000
- Midi
Libre, published in Montpellier, is sold throughout Languedoc Roussillon and
the Aveyron.
- Dernières
Nouvelles d'Alsace; the regional daily for Alsace
See
also:
The
Sunday papers in France (coming soon) :
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