Bonjour une fois de plus (Hello once again). I hope you took the time to look into les journaux (the newspapers) I reviewed dans la deuxième partie (in the second part) of this series on French newspapers. Both Le Monde and Le Figaro are excellent publications featuring quality journalism. Le Nouvel Observateur and Libération are also very popular newspapers that offer a different perspective on the news. Let’s look at them in greater detail.

Le Nouvel Observateur

Founded in 1964, Le Nouvel Observateur (The New Observer) is actually a newsmagazine. The magazine saw the light over a decade earlier in 1950 as L’Observateur politique, économique et littéraire (The political, economic and literary Observer). In 1953, the name changed to simply l’Observateur and then to France Observateur in 1954.

Le Nouvel Observateur has always been un magazine hebdomadaire (a weekly magazine) avec une orientation centre-gauche (with a center-left orientation) and more than cinq cent mille lecteurs (five hundred thousand readers) making it by far the most widely read newsmagazine in France. According to Claude Perdriel, the magazine’s founder, Le Nouvel Observateur “est un journal social-démocrate de gauche” (is a leftist social-democratic newspaper).

Le Nouvel Observateur focuses on the world of business, la politique (politics), and l’économie (the economy). Unlike some French papers, political and cultural issues of l’Europe (Europe), l’Afrique (Africa) and le Moyen-Orient (the Middle East) are covered in depth.

The magazine entered the digital age in 1999 with its website nouvelobs.com. You will find the usual sections such as Politique (Politics), Société (Society), and Éco (short for Economy) as well as Monde (World), Culture, Santé (Health), and Sport. You can subscribe to the digital magazine for as little as 1 € par mois (1 Euro a month) which is a fantastic deal.

Libération

Bursting onto the scene a decade after Le Nouvel Observateur, Libération began as un journal situé a l’extrême gauche (a newspaper situated on the extreme left). In the 80s and 90s, this journal quotidien (daily newspaper) shifted to a centre-gauche (center-left) orientation, a position it maintains to this day.

Interestingly, one of the founding members of Libération was Jean-Paul Sartre, un écrivain et philosophe Français (a French writer and philosopher) and a leading figure of existentialism who became active in politics après la Seconde Guerre mondiale (after the second World War).

The paper has had its share of ups and downs over the course of quatre décennies (four decades) but remains a fairly popular source of news avec un lectorat de près de deux cent mille (with a readership of nearly two hundred thousand).

The usual sections grace the homepage of Libération at liberation.fr but you will also find atypical sections such as Cannabis, Prostitution and Sex & Genre. You can even listen to LibéRadio, the newspaper’s very own radio station.

If Le Monde or Le Figaro do not offer what you seek in a French newspaper, go ahead and try out Le Nouvel Observateur or Libération for a different take on French news.