In a small office in northern Paris, journalists are preparing for an extremely rare and somewhat risky event: the launch of the first new print newspaper in France for 10 years, reports The Guardian.
“With the Covid crisis, people rediscovered long-form articles and books – they want a special moment of reading time at the weekend, which is what we’re appealing to,” said Jean-Christophe Tortora, president of La Tribune Dimanche, a new Sunday paper that goes on sale this weekend.
The launch of the paper, a mix of news, regional reporting, culture and lifestyle content, flies in the face of declining print sales across Europe and France’s shrinking press distribution network. Many news kiosks are closed on Sunday and some papers rely on vendors who set up stands in town centres.
But the paper’s sales will be scrutinised by politicians and commentators because France is in the midst of a furious row over Sunday newspapers, far-right culture wars and the role of billionaire industrialists in media ownership.
Tortora stressed that the launch of La Tribune Dimanche was a longstanding project and was not about going to war with rival papers, but it enters the market at the moment when France’s only standalone Sunday paper, Le Journal du Dimanche, has been radically overhauled as a showcase of identity politics and far-right ideas after a takeover by the conservative Catholic billionnaire Vincent Bolloré.