Yesterday, we reported how France is giving away 210,000 one-copy-per-week newspaper subscriptions to citizens around the country, in an intervention designed to help save the nation’s ailing news business.
Antoine de Tarle, president of the multi-local Ouest France, the most-read French newspaper, tells paidContent:UK: “It is a good business for Ouest France for it provides an access to young readers and some of them buy a subscription to the daily.
“However, some national newspapers like Le Monde are more successful than the regional newspapers (in the scheme) because they attract a wide public of students.”
Some of the 62 newspapers on offer to applicants in the Mon Journal Offert (My Complimentary Newspaper) programme bundle access to their paid websites. De Tarle: “Each newspaper has its practice for a subscription to the website.
For Ouest France, it is not included, but the free space of its website is very large.”