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'The Guardian' on the skids.

Sorry to get your hopes up, but no it is not. However, the French equivalent, Libération, is in deep trouble and has been for some time, with the prospect of its closing far from out of the question.

This has got the French socialists quite fired up, even though if Libé goes down for the count the Left will still have Le Monde. The head of the Socialist group in the French assembly has averred that 'the disappearance of Libération would be a black day for the circulation of ideas in our country". One of Sego's lieutenants spies a plot: "It is not by chance that a plan to save a left wing, anti-Sarkozy, and editorially independent newspaper can't get finance". Rather amusingly, the chief shareholder is a Rothschild.

Ideological triumphalism to one side, and reining in my ever present tendancy to the facetious, the closure of any newspaper is a sad event, but an uneconomic newspaper is no more worthy of being propped up by subsidies than any other business. The crisis at Libé is being blamed on the rise of free papers, Metro style, in France. I imagine that French freesheets are as editorially colourless as the UK equivalents, but then again the bulk of newspaper circulation in France is made up of regional dailies which are just as lacking in editorial bite, being made up of wire reports for national and international news and endless local filler. One of the 'delights' of perusing a French regional title in September is the daily update, school by school, village by village as to the quality or otherwise of la rentrée (the opening of the scholastic year). I am yet to see any report, anywhere, ever, that did not judge a local rentrée to be at worst 'bonne'.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 10, 2006 at 12:31 pm. You can skip to the end and leave a response.

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Anonymous Anonymous said... 5:11 pm

Surely, from a mkt lib pt of view, if someone is silly inuf to keep propping up Libe, Fr-Soir & l'Huma, & Morning Star & Indy, that's up to them.

You might as well object to the fact that, from the mkt's view, there are more churches than we need.

## Polly Toytown claims tday that women in fr, .de & .it lean to the left. I've nvr seen any evidence of that. Wendolene Royal yes, but wot abat Angie Merkel? Has the CR1 considered this?  



Blogger Croydonian said... 5:15 pm

I had no idea you could post in txt spk...

The CR1 will have a mull on this one. Have you seen the most excellent fisking of the Toynbee article over at our good friend IstanbulTory's place?  



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