Publishers Boldly Go Into Online Cosmos

Michael Hedges October 13, 2011 Follow on Twitter

A relevant criticism of newspaper publisher’s Web reticence has been cultural. Newspaper people, some say, lived in a silo, believing their legacy brands invincible and inflated ad rates would last forever. While no newspaper publisher holds that view today, the industry lost valuable time – and tidy sums of money – as readers and advertisers drifted away.

French national newspapers have long struggled. Their problems didn’t begin with the digital age but the onset of online media made them bigger and more expensive, perfect for billionaires with money to boat. France Soir’s billionaire owner Alexander Pugachyov has decided end the agony and stop printing the tabloid, which will become an online-only publication in December. France Soir workers promptly went on strike (October 11) in protest and the paper disappeared from the kiosks.

Mr. Pugachyov’s decision came as major daily Le Monde announced an arrangement with American online news aggregator Huffington Post to produce a French language version. In the US Huffington Post reaches 37 million unique monthly visitors with an online dish of politics, fashion and pop culture gossip aggregated from other sources or written, largely, by unpaid bloggers. Le Monde will ditch its news website Le Point, rebranding it HuffingtonPost.fr.

Union members also took industrial action against Le Monde (October 10) over plans to lay-off 150 of 240 printers. “It is dangerous for Le Monde to be taken hostage at a time when certain French papers are abandoning their print versions,” said publisher Louis Dreyfus to the Daily Telegraph (UK) (October 12). French business daily Le Tribune will also drop its print version in December.

Some French media watchers, largely of the old school, dismissed the impending move of France Soir to the Web as nothing more – or less – than yet another change at a struggling newspaper. France Soir has been “given up for dead every three years for a quarter of a century,” wrote journalist Hugues Serraf in Atlantico (October 12), one of several new blog-oriented online journals in France. “Rich boss after rich boss, it never had the chance to become a true tabloid like those in Germany or Britain, the kind that sells two or three million copies a day.”

Since buying a majority stake in France Soir in 2009, Alexander Pugachyov has been the object of derision from French media watchers. He’s the son of colorful, Russian former billionaire Sergey Pugachyov, once a pal of Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin. On making the France Soir investment, about €20 million, the younger Mr. Pugachyov said he’d get the circulation up to 200,000 per day. It never happened.

Albert Einstein once said doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result was the true mark of insanity.  This was not an observation made while thinking deeply about the cosmos. He said it while working for the Swiss tax office. It proves that Mr. Pugachyov isn’t crazy.

France Soir once was a significant French media brand, linked forever to the French resistance and the heady days of reconstruction and prosperity. From the late 1950’s it was selling over a million copies a day. It’s edition covering the death of Charles de Gaulle in 1970 sold 2.2 million. In the 1960’s it employed 400 journalists. As an online-only publication there will be but a dozen.

But, as history shows, many newspapers sold millions – and made millions – through the middle years of the last century. Every investment banker understands never to invest in a product with a legacy greater than its future. Vanity investors – and crazy people – never follow that advice, which is well since the media world would be truly dull without them.

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Media in France

French audiences are moving fast to every new platform. Mobile and Web media challenges the old guard while rule makers seek new directions. Media life in France... and a few secrets. includes updated Resources 103 pages PDF (November 2009)

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