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L'Humanité

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L'Humanité
Front page of L'Humanité on 25 February 2010. Commenting on the Greek government-debt crisis, the headline reads "Greece doesn't want to pay rich people's bills".
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBerliner
OwnerL'Humanité
EditorPatrick Le Hyaric
Founded1904; 122 years ago (1904)
Political alignment
Left-wing
HeadquartersParis
CountryFrance
ISSN0242-6870
Websitewww.humanite.fr

L'Humanité (French pronunciation: [lymanite] ⓘ, lit. 'Humanity') is a leftist French daily newspaper, sometimes referred to by the shortened name L'Huma. It was previously a de facto organ of the SFIO, and thereafter of the French Communist Party (PCF), to which it still maintains links. Its slogan is "In an ideal world, L'Humanité would not exist."[1]

History and profile

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Pre–World War II

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L'Humanité was founded in 1904[2][3] by Jean Jaurès, leader of the French Socialist Party (PSF), which merged the following year into the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO).[1][4] Jaurès also edited the paper until his assassination on 31 July 1914.[5] By that time, the newspaper's readership was estimated at 150,000.[6]

When the SFIO split at the 1920 Tours Congress, the Communists took control of L'Humanité, which became the official organ of the French Communist Party (PCF), despite the newspaper's socialist origins, while the SFIO retained control of the minor daily Le Populaire.[7] The PCF still owns 40% of L'Humanité with the remaining shares held by staff, readers and "friends" of the paper.[8] The paper is also sustained by proceeds from the annual Fête de l'Humanité gathering in France.[9][10]

The fortunes of L'Humanité have fluctuated with those of the PCF. During the 1920s, when the PCF was politically isolated, the paper was kept in existence only by donations from Party members.[11]

Louis Aragon started to write for L'Humanité in 1933, in the "news in brief" section.[12] He later led Les Lettres françaises, the paper's weekly literary supplement.[13] With the formation of the Popular Front in 1936, L'Humanité's circulation and status increased, and many leading French intellectuals wrote for it. L'Humanité was banned during World War II but continued publication secretly until the liberation of Paris from German occupation in 1944.[14]

After World War II

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The paper's status was highest in the years after World War II, when the PCF was the dominant party of the French left and L'Humanité enjoyed a large circulation. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, the paper appeared with a black margin mourning the Soviet dictator.[15] Since the 1980s, however, the PCF has been in decline, mostly due to the rise of the Socialist Party, which took over large sections of PCF support; circulation and economic viability of L'Humanité have declined as well.[citation needed]

Until 1990 the PCF and L'Humanité received regular subsidies from the Soviet Union. According to the French authors Victor Loupan (fr) and Pierre Lorrain (fr), L'Humanité received free newsprint from Soviet sources.[16]

Post–Soviet Union

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The fall of the Soviet Union and the continued decline of the PCF's electoral base produced a crisis for L'Humanité. Its circulation, more than 500,000 after the war, slumped to under 70,000. In 2001, after a decade of financial decline, the PCF sold 20% of the paper to a group of private investors led by the TV channel TF1 (part of the Bouygues group), and which included Hachette (Lagardère Group).[17] TF1 said its motive was to preserve media diversity.[18] Despite the irony of a communist newspaper being rescued by private capital—some of which supported right-wing politics—L'Humanité director Patrick Le Hyaric described the sale as a "life or death" decision to avert insolvency.[19]

After 2001

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In 2006, the paper created a weekly edition, L'Humanité Dimanche. That same year, L'Humanité had a circulation of 52,800 copies.[1] In 2007, the paper initiated a sale of its headquarters for €15 million,[20] but in the summer of 2008 the sale collapsed, leaving L'Humanité in dire financial straits. It made an urgent appeal to readers for donations and/or loans, which ended up raising more than €2 million by the end of the year.[21][22] The headquarters was eventually sold in 2010 for €12 million.[23]

By the early 2020s, L'Humanité settled into a more sustainable financial model,[24] with a paid circulation of nearly 40,000:[25]

Newspaper circulation
Year Print run Paid distribution
(France and abroad)		 Total distribution
(including free copies)
201164,26445,93848,878
201263,57843,62746,930
201357,71240,66943,744
201455,39538,29540,674
201552,78937,03739,384
201649,58635,93838,263
201747,15233,97436,132
201845,56332,01734,565
201941,01036,34738,941
202038,48037,68739,538
202135,59238,51840,245
202236,82437,09438,841
2023 35,868 35,993 38,032
2024 36,307 38,006 39,810
2025 30,670 39,832 41,580

Fête de l'Humanité

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The newspaper organizes the annual Fête de l'Humanité festival as a fundraising event.[9]

See also

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References

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  1. 1 2 3 "The press in France". BBC. 11 November 2006. Retrieved 22 November 2014.
  2. ↑ John Tebbel (2003). "Print Media. France". Encyclopedia Americana. Archived from the original on 9 May 2019. Retrieved 1 November 2014.
  3. ↑ "Historical development of the media in France" (PDF). McGraw-Hill Education. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 February 2015. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
  4. ↑ Cathie Burton; Alun Drake (2004). Hitting the Headlines in Europe: A Country-by-country Guide to Effective Media Relations. Kogan Page Publishers. p. 118. ISBN 978-0-7494-4226-2. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
  5. ↑ Levy, Raphael (January 1929). "The Daily Press in France". The Modern Language Journal. 13 (4): 294–303. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.1929.tb01247.x. JSTOR 315897.
  6. ↑ Mourgues, Elsa (7 February 2019). "Le premier jour de 'L'Humanité'". Radio France (in French).
  7. ↑ Alex Hughes; Keith Reader (1998). Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture. London: Routledge. p. 287. Archived from the original on 29 November 2014.
  8. ↑ Bosshard, Antoine (18 May 2001). "Hachette et TF1 entrent dans le capital de «L'Huma»". Le Temps (in French).
  9. 1 2 Porter, Catherine (22 September 2024). "A French Fair as Workers' Paradise, Feting Cuisine, Music and Communism". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 10 October 2024. Retrieved 10 December 2024. The Fête de l'Huma, as the faithful call it, began in 1930 to raise money for the official Communist Party newspaper, L'Humanité. Today, the left-wing daily is no longer the party's official organ, but it continues to run the annual festival.
  10. ↑ Franque, Adrien (31 October 2024). "Presse Abonnements numériques, Twitch… pour ses 120 ans, «l'Humanité» en voie de «déringardisation»". Libération (in French).
  11. ↑ Milza, Pierre (1973). "Les problèmes financiers du journal « L'Humanité » de 1920 à 1939". Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine (in French). 20 (4): 553–567 – via Persée.
  12. ↑ "Face à la 'pègre bourgeoise', Louis Aragon défend 'le monstre en jupons'". L'Humanité (in French). 18 July 2014.
  13. ↑ "Louis Aragon des articles majeurs à (re)découvrir". L'Humanité (in French). 12 September 2012.
  14. ↑ Marcot, François; Leroux, Bruno; Levisse-Touzé, Christine, eds. (2006). "Humanité (L')". Dictionnaire historique de la Résistance (in French). Robert Laffont. p. 729. ISBN 978-2221099971.
  15. ↑ Antoshin, Alexey (2016). ""Staline est mort", L'Humanité, 6 March 1953". In Liebich, Andre; Yakimovich, Svetlana (eds.). From Communism to Anti-Communism : Photographs from the Boris Souvarine Collection at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. eLivres de l'Institut (in French). Genève: Graduate Institute Publications. ISBN 978-2-940503-97-1. Retrieved 1 August 2025.
  16. ↑ Loupan, Victor; Lorrain, Pierre (1994). L'Argent de Moscou: l'histoire la plus secrète du PCF (in French). Paris: Pion. ISBN 978-2259026826.
  17. ↑ "TF1 et Lagardère au secours de L'Huma". Le Nouvel Obs (in French). 16 May 2001.
  18. ↑ Schmitt, Fabienne (28 January 2019). "Le journal « L'Humanité » en grande difficulté". Les Echos (in French).
  19. ↑ Shirbon, Estelle (19 May 2001). "Better read than dead". Independent Online.
  20. ↑ "Le siège de L'Humanité cédé pour 15 millions d'euros". Batiactu (in French). 30 November 2007.
  21. ↑ Santi, Pascale (15 August 2008). "Les lecteurs de L'Humanité se mobilisent pour sa survie". Le Monde (in French).
  22. ↑ Lehot, Mathieu (5 September 2016). "Comment Nicolas Sarkozy a sauvé L'Humanité!". Le Point (in French).
  23. ↑ "L'Etat rachète l'ancien siège de « l'Humanité »". Le Parisien (in French). 12 January 2010.
  24. ↑ "L'Huma sort la tête de l'eau". Ouest-France (in French). 28 December 2019.
  25. ↑ "L'Humanité – ACPM". L'Alliance pour les Chiffres de la Presse et des Médias (ACPM). Retrieved 6 May 2021.

Further reading

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  • Victor Loupan and Pierre Lorrain: L'Argent de Moscou. L'histoire la plus secrete du PCF, Paris, 1994
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