"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.
Yep... over here the awards for layoffs mount over time... a new employee can be fired with relatively low severance expenses, but someone with 2 years or more (like myself) is looking at 5 months' salary plus bonuses if he's fired.
Besides de-incentivizing hires, it also means that switching jobs has a huge penalty (not having the "parachute") and in a small market it's tough to take the jump. (my current situation)
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.
"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
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.
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.
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.
I wonder if it is a battle of article format rather than platform. I know a couple of people on the tech side of some newspapers and they say that there is a push for shorter, punchier articles from some of the web editors since they believe that people won't read long articles on a screen. On the other hand the print editors want longer more in-depth and detailed articles since they feel that is an area where print can beat on-line.
So if the core newsroom prefers to produce longer and more detailed articles, then I can understand them being reluctant to support the digital strategy. Not because they are against digital per se, but because they are against the form that news tends to take on the web.
It's tough to figure out exactly what that statement means, but it would not surprise me to hear journalists resisting writing SEO-friendly headlines and linkbait articles about the French equivalent of Ron Paul.
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.
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.
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.
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.