If you think the Greek crisis has been a little melodramatic (not to say occasionally idiotic), consider austerity at Le Monde. It is France’s best and bestselling national paper, offering sage advice to the nation day after day, but is also a financial wreck.
A telecoms billionaire, a banker and a former partner of Yves Saint Laurent rescued it five years ago and dutifully paid the bills. They even left Le Monde’s hallowed system of staff votes for a new editorial director (a source of some past grief) in place. But this spring, choosing yet another editor, that same staff mechanism failed to stand up and salute the ruling triumvirate’s choice: Jérôme Fenoglio, the managing editor who’s been on the paper for nearly a quarter of a century. The troika who pay the bills stood humiliated. Two fingers raised to them – and austerity.
What did Greece do in such grisly circumstances? Order another vote. And at Le Monde last week the selfsame reprise saw Fenoglio installed. Democracy, schmedocracy… No wonder Alexis Tsipras’s increasing use of his favourite Parisian paper is beginning to stir idle chat. Après Jérôme, Alexis? It’s an odd way to run the world from Athens – and an even odder way to run le monde.
