Frenchies will have to make do with Le Monde for Lefty cant, skew, and horse hockey over the next day or two. The employees of La Libération are on strike.

LA GRÈVE À LIBÉRATION
Yes, No News Is Good News!

In the fashionable salons and academic sinkholes of the capital -- denied the direction necessary to shape their worldview -- intellectuals pout, radicals rant, and progressives just faint away. Edged with indignant tears, a high-pitched cry stabs at the faithless management of the daily:

"Je veux mon Libé !"

In France, it is considered very poor Republican spirit for a money-losing operation, such as La Libération (2K4 circulation -7.8%*), to down-size. Instead, management is expected to pull cash out of thin air and prop up every last employee with his every coffee break, his every 39 paid days-off, his every benefit intact.

* Why is French readership not reading French newspapers?:

The top nine French national dailies sell around 1.4 million copies every day.

By contrast the top ten British newspapers sell almost 12 million, with the Daily Telegraph - the leading broadsheet - on 900,000 and the tabloid Sun on 3.2 million.

One is compelled to ask, do French newspapers not publish anything much read-worthy?Of course, we have an opinion, but the opinion that counts is that of the French readership, which in effect, if not in argument, resembles our own.

UPDATE 11.26.05:

LIBÉRATION IS SICK, FRANCE CARRIES ON

PARIS November 24, 2005 (Guardian) - Staff at France's Libération yesterday voted to renew a strike against planned job cuts for a third straight day, plunging the ailing left-leaning daily further into the deepest crisis in its 30-year history.

Founded in 1973 by Jean-Paul Sartre and other Maoist luminaries - including current editor, Serge July - it acquired an importance as the house organ of the free-thinking left out of all proportion to its circulation, which never exceeded 200,000.

But prospects are bleak, with the paper losing more than €500,000 (£342,000) a month and shedding readers (circulation shrank by 10% over the past 12 months, against 3% in the French newspaper market as a whole, to just 134,600 copies).

But the truth is that the paper is facing not just a financial but an identity crisis. ... Libération has lost touch with many of its former readers, shedding 30,000 in the past four years. Those that remain are getting older (only 28% of Libération's readers are aged from 15 to 34, and less willing to pay €1.20 a day for a sardonic, sometimes shrill take on the news that suited the 1970s but is ill at ease in the 2000s. The free papers Metro and 20 Minutes have also hurt.

Better the whole works go under than one redundancy. It is one of the very few operative principles in French life.

Not that we will miss Libé, but we cannot help observing, when France is in difficulties no one puts the boot in better than the French.

PFFT (What is this?): Loss to the informed public 0 | Rayonnement français 0

PFtttt means "pffftttttt pfttttttt tskkkkkkkk tskkkkkkkkk
And for your knowledge more and more Americans don't trust the medias anymore.

Stephan,

Well, ah, OK. Thanks for the bulletin. Consider our knowledge enlarged. We'll be sure to alert the hold-outs among our compatriots.

As for "pfft", our French correspondents, who know about these matters, inform us that it is more a verbal snort, something akin to the English "pshaw", but much superior in its dismissive tone. Follow the link and you will discover it does double duty here as an acronym.

The Libé strike must have you hard up if you are visiting Pave for your French news.

Regards,
DGB