Nice (AFP)

The Nice-Matin group, taken over by businessman Xavier Niel and its holding company NJJ, is going to rethink its territorial network and is planning a joint printing center with La Provence, we learned from concordant sources.

In the immediate future, the newspaper, which fell to two departmental editions during the confinement, will find its nine local editions "as of Monday", said union delegate SNJ Rodolphe Peté, the day after an extraordinary economic and social committee. "But this is not incompatible with a possible redistribution of territories".

The newspaper also has "a joint printing center project with La Provence as part of the national supply chain plan, an idea already mentioned by previous shareholders and subsidized by the state," according to Mr. Peté.

Nice-Matin plans "the launch of a working group on the creation of a new printing center in the South-East which could carry out editions for other publishers", we confirmed to the management .

Discussions between the elected officials of Nice-Matin and the new management must begin Wednesday while the newspaper will cut 80 positions by a plan of voluntary departures spread over 2020 and 2021 and could not replace the twenty departures planned at the writing with the assignment clause.

In an inter-union press release (Filpac-CGT, SNJ, CFDT, CFE-CGC, FO) worried staff had expressed the fear that NJJ, also a shareholder of the neighboring newspaper La Provence, would take advantage of the crisis to give up developing the group and close agencies or offices.

A 34% shareholder of Nice-Matin, NJJ, for the time being, has injected 8 million euros to settle the liabilities, and according to Mr. Peté, its administrator Anthony Maarek assured the CSE "want to keep its development commitments" . "The digital transition is the big building site to come, without giving up paper," said Mr. Peté.

The Nice-Matin group, a key player in the media on the Côte d'Azur, counts the regional newspapers Nice-Matin, Var-Matin and Monaco-Matin. The health crisis left "a hole of several million euros in the provisional budget but sales and web audiences have resisted", according to the indications communicated to the CSE.

Mr. Niel, founder of Iliad (Free), already co-shareholder of Le Monde and La Provence, buyer of France-Antilles and soon of Paris Turf, obtained to buy the remaining 66% of Nice-Matin, still in the hands employee shareholders, by vote at a general meeting on February 13.

The group was coveted by the Franco-Lebanese magnate Iskandar Safa, who finally bought the local channel Azur TV.

© 2020 AFP