Libération facing closure within weeks

The French newspaper founded by Jean-Paul Sartre is in big trouble. After years of falling readership and advertising Libération is facing closure because its largest shareholder, Edouard de Rothschild, has stopped paying the operating costs and, according to deputy editor Pierre Haski, salaries have been frozen. "On September 28, we hit the wall," Haski says. No white-knight investor has been forthcoming, and its journalists - true to their left-wing roots - last week proposed that readers should help finance the paper in exchange for a share of ownership. But other journalists are quitting. As The Observer reported yesterday, the paper's best-known reporter, Florence Aubenas, who was held hostage in Iraq for six months, has resigned. The last official figures, for 2005, show Libération selling less than 137,000 copies. (Via International Herald Tribune)