It is one of the hardest and most prolonged strikes for ideological reasons that have been remembered in the French press for years. Since June 22, the journalists of Le Journal du Dimanche have not gone to work as a rejection of the appointment of a new director, Geoffroy Lejeune, close to the extreme right.
The publication, founded 75 years ago and which only comes out on Sundays, has been missing its appointment with readers for five weeks already - and it will be six this Sunday -, with the economic damage this entails - around 500,000 euros in losses per week – and the failure of the relationship of trust with the audience. Without Le Journal du Dimanche the only newspaper published on Sunday is Le Parisien
Every week the editorial board voted, almost unanimously, to continue the strike. The digital edition is not even updated, which continues to offer news from June 22 and earlier. The staff has only two very clear demands: that the ownership of the newspaper, the Lagardère Group, renounce Lejeune, from the ultra-conservative weekly Valeurs actuelles whom they consider incompatible with the line of the JDD, and that journalists be guaranteed "legal independence and publishing". Lagardère denies that there should be an ultra-right bias. He considers it an "unfounded" and "disparaging" fear, and has confirmed that Lejeune will officially take over as director on August 1, whatever happens.
The real background to the conflict is that Lagardère was acquired by the Vivendi Group, from the Breton billionaire Vincent Bolloré, although the change of ownership, which recently got the go-ahead from the European Commission, has not yet been made official. Bolloré already has other media such as the magazine Paris Match or the chain of continuous information CNews. The very conservative ideological turn also raised a lot of opposition and the march of journalists.
Lejeune, 34, helped the presidential candidacy of the reactionary polemicist Éric Zemmour last year. He wrote a book about him and promoted his ideas, such as the great replacement of the native European population by immigrants from other continents.
The strike at Le Journal du Dimanche and the political struggle that is being waged have had referrals even to the country's Parliament. An urgent law proposal was presented to the National Assembly last week, which received support from several parties and which is intended to establish "a right of consent for journalists on the appointment of a newsroom director ".
The legislative initiative will not arrive in time to be embodied in law to govern the current conflict in the Sunday newspaper.
