Magnum Photos Blog

Le Monde 2015 

May 13, 2015 
by A. Abbas 
In 1976, I spent two days at Le Monde for a story - <a href='http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=24PV7C0NUDH' target='_blank'>see this distro</a>.

When I return almost forty years later, a tradition started by founder Hubert Beuve-Méry is still respected : journalists and editors are standing up at the daily morning conference where the day’s afternoon newspaper is finalized. Everything else has changed: editors and journalists are much younger; women were the exception in 1976, they are now the majority; journalists used to write their stories by pen and dictate them to stenos over the phone, now everyone is equipped with a computer and possesses a smartphone; there is an online edition of the newspaper.

And no one wears a tie any more.

The printing room which was housed in the basement of the newspaper in Rue des Italiens is no longer: gone is the smell of lead when technicians used linotypes to set the type in metal; journalists are editors do not come down for a last check up on headlines before each page was set in a drum which was then fixed on the rotary press. Today, pages are transmitted by internet to the printing press in the Paris suburbs, they are printed on thin plates to feed the rotary press. All operations are controlled electronically. But the newspaper is still delivered by vans to Paris kiosks.

Ah… I cannot promise to be around to photograph le Monde in 40 years' time.

-Abbas

<a href='http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=24PV7CHNX9M' target='_blank'>Click here</a> to access the images for licensing request and lightbox editing.