''Le Matin'' was a French

daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, spor ...

first published in 1884 and discontinued in 1944.

History

''Le Matin'' was launched on the initiative of Chamberlain & Co., a group of American financiers and the American newspaper editor Samuel Selwyn Chamberlain, in 1883, on the model of the British daily '' The Morning News''. The direction of the project was entrusted to the French journalist Alfred Edwards, who launched the first issue on 26 February 1884. His home was then situated in the

10th arrondissement of Paris The 10th arrondissement of Paris (''Xe arrondissement'') is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, this arrondissement is referred to as ''dixième'' ("10th arrondissement of Paris" = "dixième arrondisse ...

, at 6 boulevard Poissonnière, and his offices at numbers 3 to 9 on the same street. A few months later, Edwards left ''Le Matin'' to found his own journal, ''Le Matin Français'', which soon surpassed the circulation of ''Le Matin''. Later Edwards bought ''Le Matin'' and merged the two papers. He modernized the resulting hybrid with the most modern techniques and technologies such as the

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...

, and signed great writers such as

Jules Vallès Jules Vallès (11 June 1832 – 14 February 1885) was a French journalist, author, and left-wing political activist. Early life Vallès was born in Le Puy-en-Velay, Haute-Loire. His father was a supervisor of studies (''pion''), later a teac ...

and the

député The chamber of deputies is the lower house in many bicameral legislatures and the sole house in some unicameral legislatures. Description Historically, French Chamber of Deputies was the lower house of the French Parliament during the Bourbon Re ...

Arthur Ranc Arthur Ranc (20 December 183110 August 1908) was a French left-wing politician and writer. Born in Poitiers, Vienne, he was educated for the law. Implicated in a plot against Napoleon III in 1853, he was acquitted, but shortly afterwards was impri ...

. ''Le Matin'' was thus favourable to moderate republicans and opposed to Boulangisme and

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

ideas. Implicated in the

Panama scandals Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Co ...

, Edwards re-sold the newspaper in 1895 to the banker and advertiser Henri Poidatz, who invested considerably in advertising in it. The journal was particularly notable during the

Dreyfus affair The Dreyfus affair (french: affaire Dreyfus, ) was a political scandal that divided the French Third Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. "L'Affaire", as it is known in French, has come to symbolise modern injustice in the Francop ...

, as early as 1896 questioning the withheld evidence against the officer accused of treason and publishing in July, 1899 the confessions of commandant Esterhazy. In May 1899, the newspaper followed a proven publicity and readership recruitment model by organising the Tour de France Automobile in conjunction with the Automobile Club de France. The newspaper's price rose to 5 centimes, like the majority of papers in this era, and its number of pages rose from 4 to 6. The same year the businessman

Maurice Bunau-Varilla Maurice Bunau-Varilla (1856 – 1 August 1944) was a French press magnate, and proprietor of the newspaper '' Le Matin''. During the Second World War, he made the newspaper's editorial line pro-German and pro-collaborationist, and it ceased publica ...

, at first one of the paper's shareholders, joined its board of directors, becoming its president in 1901. Borne along by effective advertising, by the catchy tone of its articles and its brave reporting, ''Le Matin'' continued to increase its circulation, from 100,000 copies in 1900 to around 700,000 in 1910 and more than a million around 1914. ''Le Matin'' was thus one of the four biggest daily French newspapers in the period before

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, employing 150 journalists such as

Gaston Leroux Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux (6 May 186815 April 1927) was a French journalist and author of detective fiction. In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel '' The Phantom of the Opera'' (french: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, ...

, Michel Zevaco and

Albert Londres Albert Londres (1 November 1884 – 16 May 1932) was a French journalist and writer. One of the inventors of investigative journalism, Londres not only reported news but created it, and reported it from a personal perspective. He criticized ab ...

, along with 500 technicians and other workers. Félix Fénéon's ''Nouvelles en trois lignes'' appeared anonymously throughout the paper in 1906. In 1918, it made the first recorded use of ''jazband'' (French for a

jazz band A jazz band (jazz ensemble or jazz combo) is a musical ensemble that plays jazz music. Jazz bands vary in the quantity of its members and the style of jazz that they play but it is common to find a jazz band made up of a rhythm section and a h ...

), and was subsequently cited in both ''Über englisches Sprachgut im Französischen'' and '' Grand Larousse Dictionnaire de la Langue Française'' although they mis-typed the date as 1908. Also in the inter-war period the paper had the Russian-exile cartoonist Alex Gard on its staff. LematinParis

''Le Matin''s political leanings moved progressively towards

nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...

and, after World War I, were openly anti-parliamentary and anti-Communist. It approved of

collaborationist Wartime collaboration is cooperation with the enemy against one's country of citizenship in wartime, and in the words of historian Gerhard Hirschfeld, "is as old as war and the occupation of foreign territory". The term ''collaborator'' dates to ...

policies in June 1940 and adopted a pro-Nazi line before disappearing on 17 August 1944, a few days after the death of

. ''Les sources d’archives relatives aux journaux et aux journalistes dans les fonds d’Archives privées (séries AB XIX, AP, AQ, AR, AS) XVIIIe-XXe siècles'' ; Magali Lacousse Conservateur du patrimoine under the direction of Christine Nougaret, Conservateur général, responsable de la Section AP ; p. 24 ; IV. Les Journalistes, in série AR (Press archives
online

Notes

External links

Photographs of ''Le Matin'' front pages
* ''Le Matin'' issue
from 1882 to 1883
and als
from 1884 to 1944
in Gallica, the digital library of the BnF. {{DEFAULTSORT:Matin, Le 1883 establishments in France 1944 disestablishments in France Newspapers established in 1883 Publications disestablished in 1944 Defunct weekly newspapers Defunct newspapers published in France Dreyfus affair Newspapers of the Vichy regime Daily newspapers published in France

History

See also

Notes

External links