The newspaper had been placed the day before in compulsory liquidation, like the other titles of the same group: the weekly television program Tiki Mag, the women's magazine Fenua Orama and Maison du Fenua, a magazine specializing in housing.
"We're all sad, we knew it was going to happen and we're all crossing our fingers so that the biggest newspaper in Polynesia doesn't close definitively and that a buyer comes forward and if that's the case, we're all ready to restart the machine," La Dépêche editor-in-chief Bertrand Prévost told AFP.
The Media Polynesia group was bought in 2014 by Dominique Auroy.
This businessman immediately closed Les Nouvelles, the group's other daily, founded in 1957 and known for its uncompromising articles.
La Dépêche de Tahiti was a more popular newspaper, which relied on proximity and was distributed in the five archipelagos of French Polynesia.
“A very lively competition, beyond any economic reasoning, has been in place for several years,” writes Mr. Auroy in an editorial published in the last issue.
According to him, the economic crisis linked to Covid has caused a significant drop in resources.
But the difficulties of the group were earlier: it had accumulated lawsuits and debts, in particular with former dismissed employees.
The company was evicted from its headquarters last year after several years of unpaid rent.
La Dépêche had struggled to take the digital turn, facing Tahiti-Infos, a paper daily from the web.
For several years, La Dépêche de Tahiti was even printed by its competitor.
But the Polynesians remained attached to the historic daily, to the point that La Dépêche had become synonymous with the newspaper.
The forty employees are hoping for a buyer, who has not come forward.
A hope shared by Dominique Auroy, who says, in his editorial, "convinced that, like the phoenix in Greek mythology, the newspaper La Dépêche de Tahiti will be reborn quickly".
© 2022 AFP