Popular English-language newspaper falls victim to the credit-crunch

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The popular monthly English-language newspaper French News revealed today that it is to close, after 21 years of trading.  In an emotional statement, Miranda Neame revealed that the company had been in trouble since early-October, and found itself unable to print the December issue, or pay its staff.  She said in a statement:

"The company SARL French News is currently in redressement judiciaire.  Because our incoming money suddenly plunged from early October, by the time we arrived at deadline for the December issue we were unable to print or even pay our staff.  We had no choice but to declare ourselves insolvent to the commercial court. We are putting up the new issue on the website www.french-news.com (but we don't know how long the site will be left in existence).

French News has been entirely auto-financed by its three, now two very hard-up owners. The company today owes us both a lot of money because we have always believed in what we were doing and have put everything into keeping it alive. We (and our friends and families) have seen it through many sticky times and have until now managed to get it back on its feet but I'm afraid the credit crunch has been too much for our small reserves.

I expect one of the many parties who have shown interest in our title over the years will buy it up should it come to a liquidation and if this happens I sincerely hope they will take on the unfinished subscriptions, the correspondents who have been so supportive and of course our faithful advertisers.

Meanwhile, all those who are owed money will be contacted by our administrator.  Just in case you wish to help us, you should know that administrators charge €30 on every small claim and so it would be less crippling if subscribers, for example, formed a group and appointed a representative. Their claim would thus bear much more weight among the other creditors. The correspondents could consider forming such a group too though I sincerely hope we will come up with another solution for repaying them what they are owed."

She went on to thank surfers, contributors and advertisers for their support over the years.   The publication started out as an eight-page newsletter in June 1987.