Nearly No News

This is the pub that didn't seem to have a 'Blooming'
thing going on last Saturday.

Is Hardly New At All

Paris:- Monday, 18. June 2001:- This week's big news was actually no news at all. Le Parisien got into a snit with its distributors, the CGT union got into a snit with Le Parisien, and the result was no paper for five days.

Newspapers in Paris are distributed by a co-operative called NMPP, or 'Nouvelles Messageries de la Presse Parisienne' for short. In principle, the NMPP is owned jointly by the newspapers, but it practice it acts as if it owns them.

The Amaury Group, which publishes Le Parisien and L'Equipe, announced Le Parisien's departure from this distribution co-op and in turn got its distribution stopped by the union.

I took this to be a holiday from reading newspapers, so I did not get any details about the conflict. Traditionally, newspapers seldom report on their own relations with their own staffs.

The major union at the NMPP is the CGT-Livre. In itself this is not a problem, but this one section of one union effectively controls the distribution of newspapers and magazines in Paris. It's not done by the individual titles themselves.

The head of the management council of the NMPP, who is also the publisher of Le Figaro, was reported by Libération to be unable to convince the management of the Amaury Group to change its mind - so the strike ground on until this morning.

Libération also reported that the Amaury Group could financially support non-distribution for 10 days, but it appears to have given up after only five days.

What is not mentioned is exactly what the Amaury Group's plans were, even though their intentions were announced some months ago - how did it plan to distribute its papers in Paris? After all, it caused the ruckus by maintaining its intention to distribute its papers by its own means.

Distributing two big city dailies is not something that can be set up overnight. It requires fleets of trucks and a lot of manpower - and it requires having agreements with the sales outlets, for commissions on sales and terms for 'returned' copies.

The NMPP has a monopoly for newspaper and magazine distribution in Paris. For a retailer this often means getting copies of unordered titles, not getting copies of ordered ones, and getting billed for both. Or, getting too many or too few copies.

I've known more than a couple of newspaper kiosk operators or walk-in paper shop owners who have left the business because of endless frustrations with the NMPP.

Journalists working for Le Parisien reportedly have been annoyed because they have been told to continue as if nothing unusual has been going on. Today's edition numbered 40 pages, while last Monday's totalled 44. But I may have gotten the 'Ile-de-France' edition by mistake.

One thing Parisian car owners do not like at all are parking metres. And with about nine months to go until the coming presidential election, drivers are starting to count on a future amnesty and are paying less attention to pay either the pavement collectors or the fines levied on them for not paying.

On top of it, parking metres have become a favored target for looters, who not only take the coins they contain but break them while doing so.

Once upon a time, there was a parking metre for every slot and then they were reduced to two metres on one pole, for two slots. Now they are even more reduced, with metres - called 'horodateurs' - about 75 metres apart.

Let's say you are a good citizen and you actually find a legal parking slot. Next you have to find the parking metre, put some money in it and carry the ticket it prints back to your car, and put the ticket under the windshield where the parking ticket cew can see it.