Carte de presse

Beach Boys

By Alain Hertoghe

Two events this spring, with no apparent link, took the French establishment by surprise. "Brice de Nice" (Brice from Nice), a silly comedy about a post-adolescent trying to surf the flat Mediterranean, was a runaway hit, selling more than two million tickets in the first two weeks. Around the same time, opinion polls showed that French voters soured on the European Constitution, with the nons regularly outnumbering the ouis.

A happy coincidence, this popularity of Brice and the unpopularity of the Constitution, that no French pundit or politician seems to have remarked on. And yet the blockbuster provides a wonderful metaphor for French attitudes about an enlarged EU, the rise of China and India, the globalized economy, not to mention terrorism and the spread of WMDs, that hegemon America, and much else.

The Daily Crisis

By Alain Hertoghe

Does France have the daily press that it deserves?

An unprecedented financial crisis is hitting the major newspapers, abandoned by their readers, hence by advertisers. Le Monde is firing 90 of its 740 employees (including 35 journalists). The popular Le Parisien is also announcing that it will soon cut staff. Le Figaro and Libération, two direct competitors of Le Monde, will have to do the same, and sooner rather than later. As for France Soir, the once gloried popular daily, and the communist L'Humanité, both are in agony; they have too few journalists left to be able to fire any.