Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 10:46:02 +0200
To: "English edition dispatch" <dispatch-AT-london.monde-diplomatique.fr>
From: Le Monde diplomatique <dispatch-AT-london.Monde-diplomatique.fr>
Subject: Taking a stand




  Dear readers,

  This week (20 September) will see the first of three
  supplements of Le Monde diplomatique which are being printed
  and distributed by The Guardian Weekly (GW) on a free trial
  basis (September, October, November).

  The GW is part of Guardian Publications Ltd., UK, and it is
  distributed worldwide, sold mainly by subscription.

  We hope this will be the start of a regular printed edition
  of Le Monde diplomatique to which you or your friends may
  wish to subscribe, jointly with The Guardian Weekly.

  To secure a copy of this first edition, contact your local
  newsagent or the Guardian Weekly to place an order. The GW
  can be contacted for regular subscriptions at
  <mailto: gwsubs-AT-guardian.co.uk>.



  In this first issue, Ignacio Ramonet writes:

                 Le Monde diplomatique
                   Taking a stand

  We are delighted to welcome readers of The Guardian Weekly
  into the family of people who are regular readers of Le
  Monde diplomatique...

  Our desire to broaden the readership of Le Monde
  diplomatique beyond the confines of France is not a recent
  thing. Already one third of total sales of our
  French-language edition are to readers overseas. From the
  start, we have been not a French newspaper that happens to
  sell abroad, but an international paper that happens to be
  based in France.  Not only does our newspaper offer broad
  coverage of major world developments, but we also open our
  pages to intellectuals, experts, journalists, writers and
  public figures from all around the world. This has been a
  major contributing factor in our success.

  Le Monde diplomatique is in excellent health. Over the past
  ten years our circulation has doubled - rising from 135,000
  copies at the end of 1987 to 270,000 by late 1997. Our
  readers tend to be young - 81% of them are under 49 and 41%
  under 34. We were the first paper in France to have its own
  site on the Internet, and visits to our French-language site
  are now approaching 200,000 per week...

  Newspapers today are going through a bad patch. So what we
  have achieved is good news for all who care about freedom of
  expression, and who want to see that freedom operating in
  the interests of reliable reporting, a concern for justice
  and an ethic of solidarity...

  Our readers appreciate us because we are serious about our
  journalism. They like the fact that, in dealing with the
  news, we dig deeply into issues of economics, sociology,
  politics, science, technology, ecology, culture and
  ideology. They want to understand the complexities of the
  global economy, and what it means for the world in which we
  live. They want to know about new problems emerging in our
  societies, about the strategies of the worlds major powers,
  and about the new kinds of conflicts that are shaking the
  worlds major regions.

  This is the logic underlying our efforts in the past few
  years to build foreign-language editions and partnerships
  with newspapers outside France. Le Monde diplomatique is now
  published on a monthly basis in seven different national
  editions: in Italy with Il Manifesto; in Germany with
  Tageszeitung; in Switzerland with WochenZeitung; in Spain
  with the publisher L-Press; in Mexico with Editorial Sans
  Frontires; in Greece with the daily Eleftherotypia; and in
  the Arab world with the Beirut daily An-Nahar. The newspaper
  is also available on the Internet in a Japanese version
  published out of Tokyo. In addition, our bimonthly magazine
  Manire de Voir is published in both Greek and Portuguese. A
  printed English edition is long overdue to complement the
  existing Internet and email editions.

  This is a major project. We believe it promises well for the
  future. And within this continuing activity we attach the
  greatest importance to the success of our collaboration with
  The Guardian.

                                          IGNACIO RAMONET
                        Director of Le Monde diplomatique




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