The Parisian wants to write a new page in its history. In structural loss, the regional title and its national edition of Today in France , which have belonged to the Les Echos group (LVMH) since 2015, launched this Tuesday a plan that its leaders describe as "ambitious" and "refoundation" . Lagging behind digital with only 35,000 digital subscribers, Le Parisienwants to accelerate by doubling its offer of premium content, that is to say paid content, and is targeting 200,000 subscribers within 5 years. If the impetus of this plan is fueled by editorial objectives, it is accompanied by savings measures of ten million euros per year which include the departure of around thirty journalists from the 435 press cards that counts the current wording.
“This is not a retraction or extinction project, assures Le Figaro Pierre Louette, the CEO of the Les Echos-Le Parisien group. Le Parisien is an important newspaper by its history, by its strong reading contract and its audience. But he has economic difficulties because he is very tall in paper. ” Management emphasizes in particular that the plan was "largely designed by Stéphane Albouy, the editor. The savings that we are looking for are not the starting point of our approach. There will be no PES but movements of journalists ”, continues Pierre Louette.
The 30 targeted “unconstrained” departures will be negotiated as part of a provisional job and skills management agreement with several systems in place. First of all, a “retirement employment transition” section, open, on a voluntary basis, to employees nearing retirement. Mobility aid measures will also be proposed as well as a “mobility leave” component to support retraining or business creation projects.
A unified regional notebook
On the sensitive issue of departmental editions of the Parisian (in the eight departments of Ile-de-France and in the Oise), the management's project consists in abandoning hyper local information, judged to be of little added value, and to "Give greater resonance to local digital information" while at the same time creating a unified notebook on the paper edition called "Le Grand Parisien". “This is not the end of local coverage, says Pierre Louette. We will continue to produce articles on the departments. But there will be a double change with fewer daily articles and always as much in the region without specific coverage by department. ”
To justify this choice, the CEO stresses that each departmental edition registers on average only 4,500 buyers per issue "out of the 12 million inhabitants in Ile-de-France". Not enough to warrant current local coverage. “There is no market for a PQR in the region, judges Pierre Louette. The departmental newsrooms will be less numerous locally with about 90 journalists against 130 today. We are going to offer positions in new investigation units within the central newsroom. ”
Concretely, the Unes will always be departmental, but inside the newspaper there will be a thematic approach with a "Fact of the day" for Ile-de-France in addition to the "Fact of the day" which already exists on the national information. "The cross-functional investigation units will take up the challenges of Greater Paris," details Pierre Louette. There will initially be four: real estate and transport, already in place, but also police-justice units and portraits. The goal is to do less but better, with fewer articles that will have more power and allow for online conversion. ”
It is the long formats and reports that have more than doubled the number of digital subscribers from 15,000 to 35,000 in one year. A new “stories” service made up of fifteen journalists will be responsible for this.
Tight pagination
"It is a project that must develop and consolidate the audience, a conquering project," continues the CEO, who believes that Le Parisien has been "deprived of its digital future for a long time" . Pierre Louette is aware, however, of the brakes on change. " Many journalists will move and a lot of habits will change," he admits. We will try to allay fears but this plan will be implemented because we believe it is good for the newspaper. ”
To save money, the entire industrial component (purchasing, printing, distribution, portage) has been put in a straw. By changing the contents on paper, the pagination of the newspaper and the magazine will be tightened with two pages less on the 44 to 48 current for the first. Regarding the magazine, "there will be more reports, therefore longer subjects and more extensive coverage of Paris with the idea of making a city guide," says Sophie Gourmelen, CEO of Le Parisien . The animation of the newspaper will be simplified with unified editorial conferences. ”
To regain value, the price of the digital subscription, currently at 7.99 euros per month, will drop to around 10 euros. The price of the paper newspaper should remain unchanged at 1.60 euros on weekdays and 2.90 euros on Friday with the magazine.