Thursday, June 3, 2010

Le Monde seeks financial saviour

In newly liberated Paris in 1944, a French journalist, Hubert Beuve-Méry, founded Le Monde in the spirit of the Resistance, pledging to keep the newspaper “politically, economically and morally” independent. To preserve those freedoms, the reporters and editors were granted extraordinary powers, including a controlling ownership stake and the right to dismiss their editor and publisher. Now, one of Beuve-Méry’s three pillars of independence, the financial one, is set to fall. When it goes, many of the journalists’ privileges may go, too. That, it appears, is the cost of survival at one of the world’s most renowned newspapers, reports in The New York Times. Le Monde, a frequent critic of global capitalism, has put out an international tender for new investment that could result in the journalists and other employees handing control to an outsider within weeks. Without new funds, the newspaper might not be able to keep printing and paying wages through the summer. Fortunately for Le Monde, several potential buyers have emerged

No comments:

Blog Archive