The editorial staff of the JDD voted almost unanimously to continue the strike until Tuesday 9:30 a.m. to denounce the appointment as its head of journalist Geoffroy Lejeune, former editor of Current Values, announced this Saturday its Society of Journalists (SDJ ).
The teams of the Journal du Dimanche will meet on Monday to vote whether or not to continue this movement started on June 22. In total, 98% of voters expressed themselves on Saturday for the continuation of the movement (90 for, two against, four who do not comment) and the newspaper will not appear for the second Sunday in a row, unheard of. The previous strike in 2016 only affected one Sunday.
The editorial staff of the JDD, which is in its second week on strike, is still asking the management of Lagardère News, owner of the weekly, to “renounce the appointment of Geoffroy Lejeune” and to “offer the editorial staff guarantees legal and editorial independence. The consequence of the continuation of the movement was already known since Friday: the Sunday Journal, which had not appeared the previous week, will again be absent from newsstands on Sunday, as a member of the SDJ had indicated to AFP. .
Many observers see in the arrival of Geoffroy Lejeune at the head of the newspaper, closely followed by political and economic circles, the hand of the billionaire Vincent Bolloré, with reputedly ultra-conservative opinions. The latter leads the Vivendi group, a giant of the media in France, which includes the Canal group and its C8 and CNews channels as well as Prisma, the leading magazine press group, and the Editis publishing group.
The appointment of Geoffroy Lejeune came just after the green light given under conditions by the European Commission to Vivendi to absorb Lagardère, a group to which Paris Match, Europe 1 and the publishing leader, Hachette also belong. “I made this decision alone. Neither Vincent Bolloré nor anyone from Vivendi was involved,” Arnaud Lagardère, head of the group of the same name, told Le Figaro.
Since these announcements, several appeals for support from the JDD editorial staff have been organised, in particular a rally, under the aegis of Reporters Without Borders, which brought together nearly a thousand people on Tuesday. A strike fund was opened to support the movement and a petition was launched, it had collected more than 34,000 signatures on Saturday morning.
