L'Humanité

*L'Humanité*
	Front page of L'Humanité on 25 February 2010. Commenting on the Greek government-debt crisis, the headline reads "Greece doesn't want to pay rich people's bills".
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Berliner
Owner(s)	L'Humanité
Editor	Patrick Le Hyaric
Founded	1904; 120 years ago
Political alignment	Left-wing
Headquarters	Paris
Country	France
Website	www.humanite.fr
	Media of France; List of newspapers;

L'Humanité (French pronunciation: [lymanite]; lit. 'Humanity') is a French daily newspaper. It was previously an organ of the SFIO, de facto, and thereafter of the French Communist Party (PCF), and maintains links to the party. Its slogan is "In an ideal world, L'Humanité would not exist."^[1]

History and profile

Pre-World War II

L'Humanité was founded in 1904^[2]^[3] by Jean Jaurès, leader of the French Socialist Party (PSF), which merged the following year in the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO).^[1]^[4] Jaurès also edited the paper until his assassination on 31 July 1914.^[5]

When the SFIO split at the 1920 Tours Congress, the Communists took control of L'Humanité, which became the official organ of the French Communist Party (PCF), despite its socialist origins, while the SFIO retained control of the minor daily Le Populaire.^[6] The PCF has published it ever since and owns 40% of the paper with the remaining shares held by staff, readers and "friends" of the paper. The paper is also sustained by the annual Fête de l'Humanité, held in the working class suburbs of Paris, at Le Bourget, near Aubervilliers, and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the country.

The fortunes of L'Humanité have fluctuated with those of the PCF. During the 1920s, when the PCF was politically isolated, it was kept in existence only by donations from Party members.

Louis Aragon started to write for L'Humanité in 1933, in the "news in brief" section. He later led Les Lettres françaises, the paper's weekly literary supplement. With the formation of the Popular Front in 1936, L'Humanité's circulation and status increased, and many leading French intellectuals wrote for it. L'Humanité was banned during World War II but published clandestinely until liberation of Paris from German occupation.

After World War II

The paper's status was highest in the years after World War II, when the PCF was the dominant party of the French left and L'Humanité enjoyed a large circulation. Since the 1980s, however, the PCF has been in decline, mostly due to the rise of the Socialist Party, which took over large sections of PCF support, and circulation and economic viability of L'Humanité have declined as well.

Until 1990 the PCF and L'Humanité received regular subsidies from the Soviet Union. According to the French authors Victor Loupan and Pierre Lorrain (fr), L'Humanité received free newsprint from Soviet sources.

Post-Soviet Union

The fall of the Soviet Union and the continued decline of the PCF's electoral base produced a crisis for L'Humanité. Its circulation, more than 500,000 after the war, slumped to under 70,000. In 2001, after a decade of financial decline, the PCF sold 20 per cent of the paper to a group of private investors led by the TV channel TF1 (part of the Bouygues group) and including Hachette (Lagardère Group). TF1 said its motive was "maintenance of media diversity." Despite the irony of a communist newspaper being rescued by private capital, some of which supported right-wing politics, L'Humanité director Patrick Le Hyaric described the sale as "a matter of life or death."

Since 2001, there has been speculation that L'Humanité would cease as a daily newspaper. However, in contrast to most French newspapers, its publication has actually since increased to about 75,000.

After 2001

In 2006, the paper created a weekly edition, L'Humanité Dimanche. The same year L'Humanité had a circulation of 52,800 copies.^[1] In 2008, it sold its headquarters due to financial problems and called for donations. More than €2 million had been donated by the end of 2008. In 2020, L'Humanité had a circulation of 39,522 copies.^[7]

Year	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Circulation	103,738	106,151	107,022	105,599	105,069	102,372	100,632	100,831	100,012	97,009	100,259	96,789

Fête de l'Humanité

The newspaper organizes the annual Fête de l'Humanité festival as a fundraising event.

References

^ ^a ^b ^c "The press in France". BBC. 11 November 2006. Retrieved 22 November 2014.
^ John Tebbel (2003). "Print Media. France". Encyclopedia Americana. Archived from the original on 9 May 2019. Retrieved 1 November 2014.
^ "Historical development of the media in France" (PDF). McGraw-Hill Education. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 February 2015. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
^ Cathie Burton; Alun Drake (2004). Hitting the Headlines in Europe: A Country-by-country Guide to Effective Media Relations. Kogan Page Publishers. p. 118. ISBN 978-0-7494-4226-2. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
^ Raphael Levy (January 1929). "The Daily Press in France". The Modern Language Journal. 13 (4): 294–303. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.1929.tb01247.x. JSTOR 315897.
^ Alex Hughes; Keith Reader (1998). Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture. London: Routledge. p. 287. Archived from the original on 29 November 2014.
^ "L'Humanité - ACPM". www.acpm.fr. Retrieved 6 May 2021.

External links

(in English) Fête de l'Humanité: A weekend of politics and Rock'n'Roll – Radio France Internationale
(in French) L'Humanité (official website)
(in Russian) L'Humanité на русском языке
(in Spanish) Cinco Noticias - Actual L'Humanité en Español
(in English) Regular French Press Review Archived 16 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine – Radio France International
(in English) L'Humanité's digital archives from 1904 to 1944 – Gallica, the digital library of the BnF (archived issues themselves are in French)
(in French)Underground edition of L'Humanité (zone nord)^{[permanent dead link]} from 1939 to 1944 online in Gallica.
(in French)Underground edition of L'Huma (Bobigny) online in Gallica.
(in French) Underground edition of L'Humanité. Organe central du Parti communiste S.F.I.C. Ed. spéciale féminine. [Zone nord.] online in Gallica.
(in English) "Our Goal", translation of Jean Jaurès' editorial of the first issue

[bbc11-1] "The press in France". BBC. 11 November 2006. Retrieved 22 November 2014.

[2] John Tebbel (2003). "Print Media. France". Encyclopedia Americana. Archived from the original on 9 May 2019. Retrieved 1 November 2014.

[3] "Historical development of the media in France" (PDF). McGraw-Hill Education. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 February 2015. Retrieved 24 February 2015.

[4] Cathie Burton; Alun Drake (2004). Hitting the Headlines in Europe: A Country-by-country Guide to Effective Media Relations. Kogan Page Publishers. p. 118. ISBN 978-0-7494-4226-2. Retrieved 25 November 2014.

[5] Raphael Levy (January 1929). "The Daily Press in France". The Modern Language Journal. 13 (4): 294–303. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.1929.tb01247.x. JSTOR 315897.

[6] Alex Hughes; Keith Reader (1998). Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture. London: Routledge. p. 287. Archived from the original on 29 November 2014.

[7] "L'Humanité - ACPM". www.acpm.fr. Retrieved 6 May 2021.

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L'Humanité

History and profile

Pre-World War II

After World War II

Post-Soviet Union

After 2001

Fête de l'Humanité

See also

References

Further reading

External links

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