Thursday, September 14, 2006

Hell is other people...

...who insist on getting value for their money, at Sartre's old hangout, where the workforce wants there to be No Exit strategy:

PARIS, Sept 14, 2006 (AFP) - The staff of France's iconic left-wing daily Liberation, crippled by falling circulation and mounting debt, on Thursday issued a public appeal to the main investor to ensure the title survives.

In a two-page open letter, the paper's staff and editors appealed to the financier Edouard de Rothschild to "ensure the longevity of the publication" by investing in new editorial projects alongside cost-cutting measures.

"Libération is entering a unique and difficult period in its history," the letter said, warning the coming few weeks would be "crucial" for the paper's future. "Today we have little time and little means left."

It said there was a "need to clean up the accounts, to lay flat the functioning of the company Liberation — but also, and especially, to invest," calling on Rothschild to "take his responsibilities".

His responsibility to be exploited by the workers?

A member of the European banking family, Rothschild invested EUR 20 million in Libération in January 2005, but is said to be furious at the newspaper's continuing losses which hit EUR five million in the first half of this year.

....The last official figures show that Libération sold just under 137,000 copies in France in 2005, down from 163,000 in 2001 and 182,000 in 1990.

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