La Libre Belgique

History

The modern La Libre traces its origins to the Le Patriote newspaper, founded by Victor and Louis Jourdain in 1884. Politically, the newspaper supported the dominant centre-right Catholic Party.

After the German invasion of Belgium in World War I, Le Patriote was banned by the German occupation authorities. In February 1915, however, it was re-founded in secret by the Jourdain brothers as an underground newspaper called La Libre Belgique ("Free Belgium"). The new title was an allusion to a collaborationist paper called La Belgique ("Belgium"). A total of 171 issues of La Libre Belgique appeared during the occupation. It soon became famous as an example of Belgian resistance. Several weeks before the end of the hostilities, both of the Jourdain brothers died of natural causes. Their work was continued by Victor’s two sons Joseph and Paul Jourdain.

The newspaper was also published secretly in German-occupied Belgium during World War II in a number of unofficial editions. The largest, known as the La Libre Belgique of Peter Pan (after the fictional editor's name given on the masthead) achieved a circulation of 10,000 to 30,000 copies. 85 bi-monthly issues were published.

After the war, La Libre Belgique supported the mainstream Christian Social Party and, until 1999, the paper had a strong Christian Democratic stance. Currently the newspaper has a centrist editorial policy.

''La Libre'' today

La Libre is published six times per week (from Monday to Saturday) by the IPM publishing group and has its headquarters in Brussels. The paper has been published in a compact format since 2002.

La Libre was noted widely as one of the papers involved in a feud with Google relating to which content that could be linked and cached by Google. In July 2011, the paper was totally removed from Google News and Google's normal web search.

Circulation

La Libre Belgique reached a record circulation of 190,000 copies in 1959. In 1990 the paper sold 170,000 copies. However, by 1999 it had dropped to 68,212 copies. The 2002 circulation of the paper was 61,463 copies with a market share of 9.6 percent. The circulation of the paper was 42,000 in copies in 2010. In 2016, the paper had a circulation of 35,500 with an online traffic of 1-5 million. In 2022, the paper had a circulation of 23,198 copies according to official IPM documents.

Films

Aspects of the newspaper's history reflecting the Belgian Resistance appeared in the 1942 feature film Uncensored and the 1941 documentary short Out of Darkness, part of The Passing Parade series.

References

References

1. (July 2010). "Communicating Europe Manual: Belgium". European Stability Initiative.
2. Laporte, Christian. (1 August 2014). "Du "Patriote" à "La Libre Belgique"…". La Libre.
3. "La Libre Belgique". [[Cegesoma]].
4. (13 December 2012). "Belgian French-language news publishers, authors societies and Google reach partnership agreement". Copie Presse.
5. (2007). "European Media Governance: National and Regional Dimensions". Intellect Books.
6. "La Libre Belgique". VoxEurop.
7. (1995). "The Printed Press and Television in the Regions of Europe". Council of Europe.
8. David Ward. (2004). "A Mapping Study of Media Concentration and Ownership in Ten European Countries". Dutch Media Authority.
9. "La Libre Belgique". Euro Topics.
10. "La Libre Belgique". Euro Topics.