Le Monde

Le Monde was founded in 1944,^[8][9] at the request of General Charles de Gaulle, after the German army had been driven from Paris during World War II. The paper took over the headquarters and layout of Le Temps, which had been the most important newspaper in France, but its reputation had suffered during the Occupation.^[10] Beuve-Méry reportedly demanded total editorial independence as the condition for his taking on the project.

Le Monde began publishing a weekly digest edition in English on 23 April 1969.^[11]

In December 2006, on the 60th anniversary of its publishing début,^{[citation needed]} Le Monde moved into new headquarters in Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui, 13th arrondissement of Paris.^[12] The building—formerly the headquarters of Air France—was refashioned by Bouygues from the designs of Christian de Portzamparc. The building's façade has an enormous fresco adorned by doves (drawn by Plantu) flying towards Victor Hugo, symbolising freedom of the press.

In 2008, Le Monde was found guilty of defamation for saying that Spanish football club FC Barcelona was connected to a doctor involved in steroid use. The Spanish court fined the newspaper nearly $450,000.^[13]

In April 2016, two Le Monde reporters were denied visas to visit Algeria as part of the French Prime Minister press convoy to Algeria. The denial of visas to Le Monde reporters caused some French media to boycott the event, including Libération, Le Figaro, and France Inter. Le Monde had previously published the names of Algerian officials directly involved with the Panama Papers scandal.^[14][15] Coverage of the scandal in Le Monde included a front-page photo of President of Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika.^[15] However, the paper clarified in its next edition that Bouteflika was not directly implicated, but maintained that his associates were. Bouteflika opened a libel suit against Le Monde, which was later dropped after the newspaper apologised.^[16]

In 2014, Groupe Le Monde announced that Le Monde would move into a new headquarters, also in the 13th arrondissement, around 2017, with space for 1,200 people.^[17]

In November 2023, Le Monde joined with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Paper Trail Media [de] and 69 media partners including Distributed Denial of Secrets and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and more than 270 journalists in 55 countries and territories^[18][19] to produce the 'Cyprus Confidential' report on the financial network which supports the regime of Vladimir Putin, mostly with connections to Cyprus, and showed Cyprus to have strong links with high-up figures in the Kremlin, some of whom have been sanctioned.^[20][21] Government officials including Cyprus president Nikos Christodoulides^[22] and European lawmakers^[23] began responding to the investigation's findings in less than 24 hours,^[24] calling for reforms and launching probes.^[25][26]

Le Monde is regarded as France's leading newspaper of record.^[27][28]

In June 2010, investors Matthieu Pigasse, Pierre Bergé, and Xavier Niel acquired a controlling stake in the newspaper.^[7] In October 2018, staff learned that Pigasse had sold 49% of his stake in the company to Czech businessman Daniel Křetínský. Le Monde's Independency Group, a minority shareholder that aims to protect the paper's editorial independence, had not been informed of the sale, and asked Pigasse and Křetínský to sign an "approval agreement" that would give the Independency Group the right to approve or reject any controlling shareholder. As of September 2019^[update], they had not done so.^[29][30]

Le Monde is published around midday, and the cover date on the masthead is the following day's. For instance, the issue released at midday on 15 March shows 16 March on the masthead. It is available on newsstands in France on the day of release and received by mail subscribers on the masthead date. The Saturday issue is a double one, for Saturday and Sunday.

Thus the latest edition can be found on newsstands from Monday to Friday included, while subscribers will receive it from Tuesday to Saturday.

Le Monde was among the first French newspapers on the web, with its first web edition on 19 December 1995.^[31] It is among the 50 most visited websites in France.^[32]

Starting in the 2000s Le Monde allowed its subscribers to publish a blog on its website. These blogs were called the "les blogs abonnées du Monde.fr". On 10 April 2019, Le Monde announced that it would be closing its blog platform on 5 June 2019.^[33][34] Although the reasons for the closing of the blogs were unclear, it could be linked to the dominance of social networks like Facebook.^[35]

Le Monde launched an English language edition of its news website on 7 April 2022, featuring its articles translated from French.^[2][3]

In 1981, Le Monde backed the election of socialist François Mitterrand, partly on the grounds that the alternation of the political party in government would be beneficial to the democratic character of the state.^[36] The paper endorsed centre-right candidate Édouard Balladur in the 1995 presidential election, and Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Party candidate, in the 2007 presidential election.

According to the Mitrokhin Archive investigators, Le Monde (KGB codename VESTNIK, "messenger") was the KGB's key outlet for Soviet disinformation in the French media. The archive identified two senior Le Monde journalists and several contributors who were used in the operations (see also the article on Russian influence operations in France).^[37]

Michel Legris, a former journalist with the paper, wrote Le Monde tel qu'il est (Le Monde as it is) in 1976. According to him, the journal minimized the atrocities the Cambodian Khmer Rouge committed.

In their 2003 book titled La Face cachée du Monde (The Hidden face of "Le Monde"), authors Pierre Péan and Philippe Cohen alleged that Colombani and then-editor Edwy Plenel had shown, amongst other things, partisan bias and had engaged in financial dealings that compromised the paper's independence. It also accused the paper of dangerously damaging the authority of the French state by having revealed various political scandals (notably corruption scandals surrounding Jacques Chirac, the "Irish of Vincennes" affair, and the sinking of a Greenpeace boat, the Rainbow Warrior, by French intelligence under President François Mitterrand). This book remains controversial, but it attracted much attention and media coverage in France and worldwide at the time of its publication. Following a lawsuit, the authors and the publisher agreed in 2004 not to proceed with any reprinting.^{[citation needed]}

• Hubert Beuve-Méry (1944–1969)
• Jacques Fauvet (1969–1981)
• Claude Julien (1981–1982)
• André Laurens (1982–1985)
• André Fontaine (1985–1991)
• Jacques Lesourne (1991–1994)
• Jean-Marie Colombani (1994–2007)
• Éric Fottorino (2007–2010)
• Érik Izraelewicz (2011–2012)
• Alain Frachon (2012–2013)
• Natalie Nougayrède (2013–2014)
• Jérôme Fenoglio (2014–)

The Prix littéraire du Monde has been awarded annually by Le Monde since 2013. It is awarded at the beginning of September to a novel published at the start of the French literary season—or "rentrée littéraire". The winner of the prize is chosen by a jury made up of journalists—literary journalists from Le Monde des livres, cultural or other editorial staff—chaired by the director of the newspaper.^[38]

Winners

Year		Author	Title	Publisher	Notes	Ref(s)
2013		Yasmina Reza	Heureux les heureux	Éditions Stock	A "prix étranger" was also awarded to Kevin Powers for The Yellow Birds	[39]
2014		Emmanuel Carrère	Le Royaume	Éditions P.O.L		[40]
2015		Agnès Desarthe	Ce cœur changeant	Éditions de l'Olivier		[41]
2016		Ivan Jablonka	Laëtitia ou la Fin des hommes	Éditions du Seuil		[42]
2017		Alice Zeniter	L'Art de perdre	Éditions Flammarion		[43]
2018		Jérôme Ferrari	À son image	Actes Sud		[44]
2019		Cécile Coulon	Une bête au paradis	Éditions de l'Iconoclaste		[45]
2020		Francesca Serra	Elle a menti pour les ailes	Éditions Anne Carrière		[46]
2021		Jean-Claude Grumberg	Jacqueline Jacqueline	Éditions du Seuil		[47]
2022		Mathieu Belezi	Attaquer la terre et le soleil	Le Tripode		[48]
2023		Neige Sinno	Triste Tigre	Éditions P.O.L		[49]

• List of French newspapers
• Libération
• El País, newspaper in Spain inspired by Le Monde
• Jean-Louis de Rambures, journalist
• Henri Pierre, journalist

• Merrill, John C.; Harold A. Fisher (1980). The world's great dailies: profiles of fifty newspapers. pp. 202–10.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Le Monde.

• Official website (in French)
• English edition