The national daily press of France

History of the French press from the earliest news sheets to the national (Paris) dailies of the 1990s, with emphasis on the post-WWII period. After the Nazi occupation, the post-Liberation government attempted to set up a bureaucratic framework that would foster a free, honest, and pluralistic press, with decidedly mixed results. French experience with different modes of noncapitalist newspaper ownership (e. g., political party, cooperative, nonprofit foundation) are explored, and possible causes for the precipitous decline in newspaper readership in France are analyzed.