Pfor twelve years, I had the honor of directing THE Sunday newspaper [JDD]. I learned there, at a very young age, the job of editorial director, which I continued to exercise Paris Match for seven years and then, still today, at Polka Magazine. It’s a very special job, made up of demands, obligations and rigour: having at the same time, and at the same time, the trust of shareholders and the editorial team, then maintaining it; ensure, in the many decisions to be taken, strict compliance with the editorial line based on clear values shared by all; stick to a budget. A profession similar to that of the conductor, who leads his musicians freely following a score. More finance.
In the early days of the journalists’ strike JDDI wanted to express my support for them by sending them this somewhat grandiloquent but heartfelt message: “A newspaper is like a country, it has a history; this story engages him, just as it engages its owner, director and editorial team. » These lines have been completed and signed by other former directors of the JDD ; and we recalled together that the human and republican values of our former newspaper, which was widely open to a plurality of opinions, are in total opposition to far-right ideology. The remarks were sincere, the tone solemn, and the result… without effect: Geoffroy Lejeune was appointed editorial director of the Sunday newspaper 1er august.
The fight, it is true, seemed lost in advance, because too unequal. The only possible victory would have been if Arnaud Lagardère, faced with almost unanimous opposition from the editorial staff, had given up this nomination or if Geoffroy Lejeune, out of elegance, refused to accept it. Neither of them had that attitude.
law and money
Everything that was said during these long weeks of mobilization, the great speeches, the incantations of each other, the meetings with an understanding and compassionate minister of culture, would therefore have been useless. If not to confirm a rule, which in itself is not outrageous: the law, in a country rightly called “of law”, always has the last word. Law but also money!
Constantly, throughout this conflict, and in particular on the evening of this great meeting in solidarity with the journalists on strike, on June 27, at the Free Theater of Paris, organized by Reporters Without Borders, I had in mind this sentence that a banker friend had confided to me a few years ago, in connection with a completely different conflict which opposed me, when I was the director, to the owner of Paris Matchalready Arnaud Lagardère, whose confidence I lost, and he lost mine, because it works both ways. “We never win, says my friend, against capital. » He was right.
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