

Le Monde on the Brink - riffer
http://www.mondaynote.com/2010/06/20/le-monde-on-the-brink

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dcreemer
"In France, firing a printing plant employee is hugely expensive. The gent is
paid €50,000 per year, works 32 hours per week and 164 days per year. Firing
him costs about €466,000 – that’s a French government estimate..."

When I had the unpleasant task of considering layoffs at a French subsidiary
we used to budget about 2x annual salary for severance expenses. The 9x number
quoted in the article is amazing if true... In those circumstances I would
work very hard to avoid making full-time hires.

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lionhearted
> In those circumstances I would work very hard to avoid making full-time
> hires.

You'd think people would figure out that secondary effects exist sooner or
later, but amazingly, they seem not to...

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dagw
Actually France on the whole has figured it out. Contrary to the stereotype,
France has relatively few fully unionised fields, and very low union
membership. It is just a few fields, like printing, that still has archaic
union regulation and rules still in effect.

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drats
"An excessive reliance on public subsidies which account for about 10% of the
industry’s entire revenue." I was shocked to find this out. More information
here (not sure how reliable it is)
<http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/DF_media-prt.shtml>

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eli
Interesting On The Media piece about the history and state of France's
subsidies: <http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/01/30/05>

Most recently Sarkozy bought everyone turning 18 a newspaper subscription.

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plesn
The problem is I don't consider "Le Monde" as a quality newspaper anymore: why
would I buy it? What's its added value compared to information I cat get for
free? It has a very serious tone but is in fact a very consensual newspaper
(and usually gets really conservative as soon as elections approach; just look
who is controlling it…). More concerning, it brings very few relevant in-depth
analysis with historical context and involvement and doesn't differenciate
itself enough from all the rest. I subscribe only to "Le Monde Diplomatique"
which is the only newspaper which still brings some insights and reports going
beyond just annotated events which that I can find anywhere.

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hartror

        The core newsroom’s reluctance to support the digital strategy.
    

This is interesting as my impression is much of the newspaper industries
decline as a failure in business leadership and that the newsrooms had just
been following orders or unable to effect change.

This suggests that newsrooms, Le Monde's at least, have been resisting the
move to more online readership. I wonder what the reason is, there must be an
entrenched section of old school editors and writers who still don't
understand the online economy. Not something I expected of journalists.

~~~
rbancroft
I find this hard to believe as well, but for different reasons. I had an
online subscription to Le Monde for years even though I wasn't even living in
France. It was tiered but I thought it was extremely advanced in terms of
features offered. In addition to web formats, I was also able to download PDF
versions of the printed newspaper. It wasn't exactly cheap but I was happy to
pay it. I only wish my local newspapers now were of that quality and had the
same online services.

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InclinedPlane
Here's the problem: almost all newspapers self-identify in a way that prevents
any degree of substantial change of their core business. To them the thought
of changing enough to survive in the modern, online, world is no different
than the prospect of winking out of existence after running out of money, both
appear to be death from their perspective.

This doesn't touch on the often numerous labor related legal straight jackets
most big newspapers operate under. This combination explains why so many
newspapers have simply continued operations unchanged until suddenly dying, in
just about any other industry there would be a lot more innovation in play
when so many papers are staring down near certain death in the next few years.
Ultimately I think the end result is that the successor to the newspaper will
not come from the newspaper industry but will sprout up from elsewhere.

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patio11
_just about any other industry there would be a lot more innovation in play_

Oh, let's not be unfair, the newspapers aren't noticeably worse than primary
education, secondary education, the automobile industry, legacy airlines, or
the government at innovating.

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eli
Honestly, I think it is being unfair. This is not the usual story of some
limber newcomers offering a better product for cheaper -- this is a monumental
shift that upended an entire industry. This sort of thing doesn't happen very
often.

