Thus, “La Tribune Dimanche” will appear in print and digital from October 8 and will be under the responsibility of Philippe Mabille and Fabrice Gleszynski, respectively managing editor and deputy managing editor of La Tribune and Bruno Jeudy, former JDD who left the hierarchy of Paris Match (Lagardère News group) in August 2022 amid disagreements with his management, which will take over the delegated management of La Tribune Dimanche. This will be the fourth national newspaper published on Sunday. Two direct competitors would be: JDD (a Sunday newspaper, shaken by a crisis due to the arrival of its president Geoffroy Lejeune, identified on the far right) and Le Parisien / Today in France. The latest is the daily sports newspaper L’Equipe. Created in 1985, La Tribune is today a digital-exclusive weekday daily, having dropped its daily paper format in 2012 and then weekly in 2020. “There is room for a new Sunday daily,” confirmed La Tribune president Jean- Christophe Tortora. He points out the “paradox” of this day: it is the day when the French have “the most time to read” but where there are “the fewest national dailies” and where “the distribution network is the least important”.
According to him, this project dates back several months, before the unrest in the Jordanian Dinar, and was not prepared to compete with the latter. He said, “I have never seen a project succeed by crusade against another.” “Our idea is legitimate action for something, not against it.” The Sunday Foundation experienced a historic 40-day strike between the end of June and the beginning of August after the announcement of the arrival of Mr. Lejeune at its helm. Printed in 120,000 copies at its launch, La Tribune Dimanche would be general, not just economical. Half of the paper will deal with “major societal issues” (politics, education, climate, etc.) and half with “culture and the art of living,” according to Mr. Tortora. “We are not here to hold a political line, we will be on the side of neither right nor left, representative of pluralism in our editorial board,” Mr. Tortora told AFP. This expansion to new topics will require “external recruitment” in addition to the current editorial staff of the “Tribune” (40 journalists, “half of them” are in the provinces, according to the leader). The first recruits were Soazig Quéméner (of Marianne magazine) as editor-in-chief and political journalist Ludovic Vigogne (L’Opinion). “It is important for us to have a rich and serious political offering,” Mr. Tortora commented. Moreover, this new address seems to be a rationale for some JDD defectors.
The Sunday Tribune “will enrich the Sunday show. It’s good for the press and the readers,” appreciated Rudolph Saade on The X Network (formerly Twitter). This launch is further evidence of the French-Lebanese billionaire’s growing ambitions in the media sector. Based in Marseilles, the powerful shipowner CMA CGM, which he heads, took control of La Tribune at the end of May by taking over the Hima group from Mr. Tortora. A few weeks ago, Bruno Jeudy had joined the newspaper for an interview there, weekly, “L’entretien du Jeudy”. In October, CMA CGM, which recorded a record net profit of more than 23 billion euros in 2022, became the owner of the La Provence group (regional daily newspapers La Provence and Corse Matin). Then he invited himself, at the end of 2022, to the capital of the audiovisual group M6, and then, at the beginning of April, to that of the online video media Brut. A sign of its ambitions in the sector, CMA CGM in early March recruited Laurent Guimier, former Director of Information at France Télévisions, to head up its media subsidiary, CMA CGM Media.
