L'Humanité
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 July 26, 2005 "Growing old in the streets" |
|
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Berliner |
| Owner | L'Humanité |
| Editor | Patrick Le Hyaric |
| Founded | 1904 |
| Political allegiance | Communist, Alter-globalization, Eco-socialism |
| Headquarters | 32 rue Jean Jaurès F-93528 Saint-Denis Cedex |
| Website | www.humanite.fr |
L'Humanité ("Humanity"), formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party (PCF), was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO).
The paper is now independent (it still maintains broad links with the PCF) and it is the last French national daily newspapers of the left (Libération is now on a centrist social-liberal view).
Contents |
[edit] Overview
[edit] Pre-World War II
When the Socialists split at the 1920 Tours Congress, the Communists retained control of L'Humanité, and it has been published by the PCF ever since. The PCF owns 40% of the paper with the remaining shares held by staff, readers and "friends" of the paper.
The paper is also sustained by the annual Fête de L'Humanité, held in the working class suburbs of Paris, at Le Bourget, near Aubervilliers.
The fortunes of L'Humanité have fluctuated with those of the PCF. During the 1920s, when the PCF was politically isolated, it was kept in existence only by donations from Party members.
Louis Aragon started to write for L'Humanité in 1933, in the section "news in brief". He later led Les Lettres françaises, the newspaper's weekly literary supplement. With the formation of the Popular Front in 1936, L'Humanité 's circulation and status increased, and many leading French intellectuals wrote for it. During World War II, L'Humanité was banned but continued to publish clandestinely until the liberation of Paris from German occupation.
[edit] After World War II
Its status was highest in the years immediately after the war: during the late 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s, the PCF was the dominant party of the French left, then L'Humanité enjoyed a large circulation.
Since the 1980s, however, the PCF has been in decline (mostly due to the rise of the Socialist Party, which took over large sections of the former PCF support base), the circulation and economic viability of L'Humanité have declined as well.
Until 1990 the PCF and l'Humanité received regular subsidies from the Soviet Union. According to the French authors Victor Loupan and Pierre Lorrain, l'Humanité received free newsprint from Soviet sources.
[edit] Post Soviet Union
The fall of the Soviet Union and the continued decline of the PCF's electoral base produced a crisis for L'Humanité. Its circulation, once over 500,000 (after WWII), slumped under 70,000.
In 2001, after a decade of financial decline the PCF sold 20% of the paper to a group of private investors led by TV channel TF1 (Bouygues group) and including Hachette (Lagardère group). TF1 said that its motive for buying a share of a failing newspaper was the "maintenance of media diversity." Despite the irony of a communist newspaper being rescued by private capital, some of which was involved in supporting right-wing politics, L'Humanité director Patrick Le Hyaric described the sale as "a matter of life or death."
There has been continued speculation since 2001 that L'Humanité will cease publication as a daily newspaper, but so far this has been averted. On the contrary of the majority of the French newspapers, its publication has increased on the past years, today about 75,000.
[edit] After 2001
In 2006, it made a new weekly edition, L'Humanité Dimanche.
But in 2008, it sold its headquarters due to financial problems and made calls for donations. More than 2 million € had been donated by the end of 2008.
[edit] External links
- (French) L'Humanité website
- (English) L'Humanité's English website (see also here about voluntary team translating articles)
- (English) Regular French Press Review - Radio France International
- L'Humanité en russe
- L'Humanité's digital archives from 1904 to 1944 in Gallica, the digital library of the BnF
- (English) "Our Goal", Jean Jaurès' editorial of the first issue
[edit] Further reading
- Victor Loupan and Pierre Lorrain: L'Argent de Moscou. L'histoire la plus secrete du PCF, Paris, 1994
