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 and Sunday tabloid press that is so
omnipresent in the UK.
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French media: the daily newspapers in France
Apart from the absence of "Sunday papers" and of a
popular muck-raking national tabloid press, newspapers in France
are as varied as anywhere.
Almost all French newspapers
have lost readers and circulation since 2000, and are continuing to do
so. 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.
Circulation figures below are quoted from the OJD - the
French bureau of circulation.. Figures refer to the average number of
copies purchased per day in France
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 2010 (copies sold per day in
France) was only 317,000 - only about half of the figure for Britain's
Daily Telegraph. (Total daily diffusion, including free copies and
copies sold abroad, was 649,000 in 2010).
- 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. In 2010 Le Monde's daily sales
in France were just 286,000. The paper was the subject of a bitter
refinancing clash in 2010, and was eventually taken over by a
trio of top businessmen with left-leaning sympathies. In autumn 2011, it announced a return to profitability.
- 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, selling only an average of 113,000 copies a day in
2010.
- 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 48,000.
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
302,000 – 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 in 2009, they had a
circulation of 477,000, 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; by 2012 its circulation
had fallen to about 74,000..... compared to over a million in
the 1950's, its heyday. In December 2011, the printed version of France
Soir ceased publication. The paper continues to appear as a 100% online
newspaper. Website
- La
Croix: though by tradition a Catholic daily, La Croix has
in recent years become much more of a mainstream newspaper. With a paid
circulation of over 90,000 in 2008 and 94,000 in 2010, it is 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. Most regional dailies are mid-market tabloids.
- Ouest
France, published in Rennes, is the
biggest-selling daily in France, with an average circulation of 758,000
(copies bought) in 2009, down on the previous year.. 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 (185,000 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
The Sunday press in FranceThe
"Sunday papers" are not an institution in France, as they are in the
UK. There are only two notable specifically "Sunday" newspapers,
and one of them comes out on Friday. They are
- France Dimanche (published each Friday), which is largely a people magazine published by the Hachette group; and
- le JDD, Journal du Dimanche, which could honestly advertise itself using the slogan once misused by one of the UK Sunday papers, as "Le JDD is
the Sunday Papers" in France. The JDD is a serious Sunday
newspaper, and is also published by Hachette. It is much read in
the business community.
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