The cross will she have an editorial director before Christmas? The editorial staff of the Catholic daily (founded by the Augustinian congregation of the Assumption, which owns the Bayard group) is called upon to decide, on November 30, on the accession of Anne Ponce to its head. The name of the editorial director of La Croix L’Hebdo and deputy director of Bayard was announced internally, Wednesday November 15, by Jean-Marie Montel, general manager and member of the management board of Bayard.
Since the departure of Jérôme Chapuis for the Franceinfo morning show in June, it is his former assistant, Anne-Bénédicte Hoffner, who has taken over in the interim. With Philippe Colombet, who left home a few weeks ago, Mme Hoffner and Mr. Chapuis had formed a management trio since July 2021. Together, they had put in place a new formula for the title, accompanied by a reorganization of the editorial staff at the origin of unprecedented tensions in a collective renowned for its serenity. By domino effect, the defection of Mr. Chapuis prolonged this climate of instability, to which the appointment of Anne Ponce, already reported by the specialized publication The lettercould finally end.
“What we had been experiencing for a few months was a bit surreal”, summarizes a journalist who prefers to express herself anonymously. Because, in the wake of the departures of Mr. Chapuis and Mr. Colombet, the chairman of the board of directors of Bayard, Pascal Ruffenach, had to give up, on October 17, appointing Antoine Daccord to the general management of the daily, after a distrust of him had spread to the editorial staff. Following this failure, Mr. Ruffenach himself decided to step aside from the case in favor of Jean-Marie Montel.
“An idea of appeasement”
“Anne Ponce seems likely to bring the editorial team into a digital transformation project”, defends the latter. The journalist will have to choose her deputies, then present an editorial project to the editorial staff a few days before the vote. For this nomination to fail, two thirds of the votes cast would have to be negative, on the grounds that this nomination would be “likely to profoundly modify the direction or development of the journal The cross » – according to the terms of the 2006 agreement which establishes this right of veto. Around a hundred journalists who are members of Copec (Permanent Commission for Study and Cooperation of The crossthe representative body of the editorial staff), out of the one hundred and thirty press cards which work for the title, are called upon to give their opinion.
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