The Red Tide

France's Communist press suffered its most calamitous postwar week. With partylike regularity, three provincial Communist dailies abruptly went out of business, a fourth teetered on the verge of closing, and a fifth announced that it would drop four of its five editions. Total circulation affected: 165,000. The reason was given as the "crushing charges that have been levied against the democratic press." Translation: rising expenses have put the Communist papers into an old-fashioned capitalist cost squeeze, aggravated by reader disillusionment over destalinization. Since 1950, France's 15 Communist dailies (circ. 1,250,000) have shrunk to nine (circ. 505,000).

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