Final struggle? France's communist L'Humanite on the ropes
France's communist daily L'Humanite has long enjoyed a moral authority that far exceeds its dwindling number of readers, but the clock may be ticking for the 115-year-old paper of record of die-hard leftists. After years of operating at a loss despite millions of euros of public aid, a court outside Paris will decide Thursday if L'Humanite can keep printing while being placed in receivership. Even if this best-case scenario gives the paper some breathing room, its journalists face working under a court-appointed manager who will be watching every euro -- an ignominious turn of events for a paper that has spent more than a century railing against bosses. "The paper's business model is based only on defending the poorest," said Gregory Marin, a politics reporter and head of L'Humantite's journalist committee. "The advantage is that we can look ourselves in the mirror without shame," he noted, "but the disadvantage is that these people don't have a lot of money to support us." L'Huma, as it's widely called, has already appealed for donations, the latest in a string of fundraising campaigns that periodically bring in much-needed millions to keep the presses rolling. But with daily circulation down to around 40,000 copies -- analysts say around 30,000 are actually sold -- the paper now faces the daunting prospect of finding a viable business model. "I think they'll find a way of getting on a little longer, but it's like an artificial coma," said Patrick Eveno, a French media historian. "It's obvious that it's impossible to keep going like this forever," he said. - State support - This year marks the 115th anniversary of L'Huma's founding by Jean Jaures, the revered socialist stalwart whose assassination on the eve of World War I helped cement L'Huma's place in the media landscape. Its heyday came after World War II, when circulation soared to nearly 400,000 as French communists basked in the glory of their role in the resistance against the Nazi occupiers. All self-respecting French leftist are still expected to make the annual pilgrimage to the Fete de l'Humanite, a daylong party of events and concerts which in recent years has attracted artists from Lauryn Hill and Joan Baez to Iggy Pop. And this month the paper is hosting a Paris fundraiser that will include star chef Thierry Marx and the mathematician and pro-Macron lawmaker Cedric Villani. "We carry a unique and long history, longer even than that of the French communist party," Marin said. "Our ambitions... are to relay the news accurately while also interpreting it and defending the social advancement of workers and the poorest." But analysts say taxpayers have propped up the paper and its 200 employees for years, even as fewer people were buying it. Along with annual subsidies for all French papers -- L'Huma got nearly 4.2 million euros ($4.8 million) in 2017 -- presidents from Francois Mitterrand to Francois Hollande have traditionally stepped in to erase debts or inject cash. So far Emmanuel Macron hasn't kept up the custom, and the paper has already sold its last major asset: the Oscar Niemeyer-designed headquarters in the Saint-Denis suburb of Paris, bought by the government for 12 million euros in 2010. And last week France's Communist Party, facing its own financing squeeze after dismal 2017 election results, announced it would no longer print its weekly four-page supplement in the paper. - The right questions? - L'Humanite has already outlasted most other European dailies which functioned as communist mouthpieces, such as Italy's Unita, which folded in 2014. Britain's Morning Star, formerly the Daily Worker, is another rare survivor after the USSR's demise, though it too is currently appealing for donations to its "Fighting Fund". But critics say L'Huma's ideological bent often cause its coverage to appear naively out of touch. Reports of the opposition uprising in Venezuela, for example, mentioned the country's dire economic straits but did not ascribe them, as most economists do, to President Nicolas Maduro's policies. "L'Humanite is not a normal business undertaking, it's a political undertaking," Eveno said. "They're not asking themselves the right questions: Why isn't my paper selling, Why isn't anyone reading it?" The paper says subscriber numbers belie its outsize role as a principled counterpoint to mainstream media outlets in an era of "fake news". Even some right wing politicians have answered the recent call to subscribe, saying L'Huma is vital for ensuring France's media pluralism. Macron hasn't moved to help the paper yet, but Marin believes the French leader's efforts to gauge national feeling in the face of anti-government "yellow vest" protests could lead him to value its input. "I can't imagine, as he promotes his 'great national debate', that he would let a voice actively participating in this debate go silent," Marin said. France's L'Humanite newspaper is facing a financing crunch that could see it placed in receivership
