A forty-day journalist strike at France’s sole Sunday newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, the longest strike of its kind since 1975, has come to a close.
Famed for its political interviews, Le Journal du Dimanche is one of the most influential newspapers in the nation’s media landscape and can boast over 130,000 paying subscribers.
Since June 22nd, virtually its entire editorial staff, consisting of 50 editors and more than 30 freelancers, had ceased work over Geoffroy Lejeune’s appointment as the publication’s new editor-in-chief.
The journalists’ reason for their dramatic move was, perhaps unsurprisingly, not Lejeune’s professional shortcomings but his ideological beliefs: Lejeune is of a decidedly rightist bent.
Until his sacking on June 5th this year, he was editor of the right-wing weekly Valeurs Actuelles, which has invariably been portrayed by the Left as ‘anti-Semitic’ and ‘racist’.
During France’s April 2022 election, he threw his weight behind mass immigration skeptic and presidential hopeful Éric Zemmour and was subsequently branded ‘far-right’ for doing so.
On Tuesday, August 1st, the Le Journal du Dimanche journalists’ association (SDJ) tweeted that 94% of the staff decided to end the strike as the Lagardère group [the publication’s owner whose main shareholder is conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré] “remained deaf to our claims.”
“We did not win,” they continued. “Today, Geoffroy Lejeune is taking office. It is an empty newsroom he will step into. Dozens of journalists refuse to work with him and are expected to leave the JDD.”
In its own statement, Lagardère group said that management had reached an agreement with the journalists’ association and unions which would ensure that JDD will start releasing online articles again from Tuesday on, with its papers returning to newsstands from mid-August.
The agreement also provides a financial package for journalists who opt to leave the newspaper, the statement said. The precise contents of the agreement, however, were not revealed.
Lejeune, still only 34, is succeeding Jérôme Béglé, who has since left for the magazine Paris Match, also owned by the Lagardère group.
