Echo to Day

Paris publishers, much like tooting Paris taxi drivers, are in a perpetual dither. With less than half New York City's 7,400,000 population, Paris tries to support 120 newspapers to New York City's 24. Most of the Parisian papers are party organs, constantly in hot financial water. None is making money on its journalistic merits alone. The thriving Paris Soir is owned by Billionaire Henri Beghin, French beet sugar and paper tycoon, and by Textile Tycoon Jean Prouvost. The dull Temps is the handmaiden of the heavy industries. Still another few, like Communist Humanite have their worrying done for them in foreign capitals.

The stragglers live precarious lives. Year in, year out, the most generous subsidies to the French press and French journalists are tossed out where they will do the most good, by the French Government and its constituent parties. When moderates ran France, the leftwing press suffered lean days. Since 1936, roles have been reversed. The Popular Front press has licked the subsidy platter clean. The Left & Right papers have raised their price per copy three times in a year, but after nearly two years on a bread & water diet most of the conservative dailies are in the last stages of anemia.

Appeals for funds plaster their front pages. Jacques Doriot's La Liberte urgently needs 500,000 francs. Fascist Col. Franc,ois de La Roque's Petit Journal, panhandling for millions, has founded a "Club of Friends of the Petit Journal" who give up cigarets or lipstick to contribute 10 francs a month. The Royalist Action Francaise, perennially broke, is still begging another 1,000,000 francs--starting a new campaign on the heels of an old one. Young L'Epoque must have 6,000,000 francs or it will close.

In the worst shape of all, however, was the respectable 54-year-old Catholic Nationalist Echo de Paris. Last week it was finally rescued by and merged into veteran Leon Bailby's struggling Rightist Le Jour. Le Jour, now Le Jour-L'Echo de Paris, lost, however, one of Echo's biggest assets: Anglophile Andre Geraud, better known as Pertinax, one of the best connected of the many well-connected political writers in France. His political dispatches which sparkle like champagne at a diplomat's table have long appeared in the London Telegraph and the New York Times. From now on he will devote full time to the editorship of a weekly, L'Europe Nouvelle, continue his spasmodic pieces for the Times and Telegraph.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.