Paris (AFP)

Le Monde increases its price from Friday to reach the three-euro mark at newsagents, the newspaper's management announced to its readers.

"In recent years, we have tried to slow the rate of increase in our newsstand selling price, while resolutely investing in the quality and diversity of our editorial content", explained in an editorial the director of the group Jérôme Fenoglio and its president Louis Dreyfus.

"Unfortunately, the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on our economic model with both a substantial and lasting drop in our advertising revenue and the cessation of payments from our distributor, the company Presstalis, requires us to find additional resources in order to guarantee the quality of our contents as well as the financial independence of the newspaper ", they underline in the edition dated Saturday, which title on the" historic collapse of the French economy ".

"This is why, from August 1, the selling price of your newspaper will increase to € 3 on weekdays and € 4.70 at weekends," specify the newspaper's managers.

Le Monde had already increased its price by 20 cents at the start of 2019 to reach 2.80 euros, as did the business daily Les Echos. Le Figaro sells for 2.90 euros, L'Opinion for 2.80 euros, L'Humanité for 2.30 euros, and Liberation for two euros.

In 2019, the Le Monde group posted a net profit for the third year in a row (2.6 million euros) but the health crisis of early 2020 wiped out part of its revenue, the newspaper's management said at the start. July.

Owned by Xavier Niel, Matthieu Pigasse, Daniel Kretinsky and the Prisa group, the Le Monde group recorded in 2019 a stable turnover of 302.7 million euros "thanks to the very marked growth of the subscriber portfolio digital world ".

In May, the newspaper passed the milestone of 300,000 purely digital subscribers, while Courrier International had 55,000 in June, Le Monde Diplomatique 21,000 at the end of 2019 and Télérama 10,000.

The first months of 2020 were more difficult, the group having to face a 50% drop in its advertising revenues and the closure of kiosks; he assesses the impact of the crisis at 18 million euros on its turnover. In addition, there are costs linked to the bankruptcy of distributor Presstalis, estimated at 14 million euros.

© 2020 AFP