Sarkozy move to promote reading habits

By Angelique Chrisafis

NICOLAS Sarkozy, the French president, announced 600 million euros (£565.1m) in emergency aid for his country’s troubled newspaper industry on Friday, declaring that every 18-year-old in France would get a year’s free subscription to the paper of their choice to boost reading habits.The French press is among the least profitable in Europe, stymied by a rigid communist print union, a lack of kiosks selling papers and a declining readership below that of the UK or Germany.The public’s trust in the media is at an all-time low in a climate where politicians rewrite their own interviews for publication and the president’s business friends own several major papers or TV stations.Sarkozy has been likened by his political opponents to Silvio Berlusconi for recent moves to tighten state control of public TV. But on Friday he made no apology for announcing measures to improve print and online newspapers.In a speech, he instructed them to improve the content of their articles, bring in younger readers and transform business models in exchange for the emergency aid over the next three years. He said the help was not an attack on press freedom but would protect newspapers’ independence. It was the state’s responsibility to ensure “a free, independent and pluralist press”, he said.The French state gives 1.5 billion euros in direct and indirect state aid to the press each year, and has overseen four months of industry crisis talks.Sarkozy’s measures included a year’s free, state-subsidised newspaper subscription for all teenagers from their 18th birthday because “the habit of reading a daily paper takes root at a very young age”. He extended tax breaks for investors in online journalism and doubled state advertising in print and online papers.Rules would be changed to allow investors outside Europe to take bigger stakes in French titles and the number of outlets selling papers would be increased.The biggest problem for French newspapers is the cost of printing with printworks controlled by the communist Le Livre union, which has rigid protections. Sarkozy said the state would support negotiations with printers’ unions to reduce costs by between 30 per cent and 40 per cent.Laurent Joffrin, editor of the leftwing weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, said the measures made “good sense”, but more detail was needed on printworks negotiations. Asked about the president’s role to lecture journalists on the quality of newspaper content, Joffrin said: “It is bizarre, but this is France. Ten per cent of the press’s turnover comes from state aid ... But it would be a problem if he told us what our content should be.”The circulation of all French national papers totals 8 million, half that of the UK. The biggest daily seller is the sports paper L’Equipe.— The Guardian, London