Bart Beaty On The L’Association Assembly Coverage

By Bart Beaty

The scariest piece of coverage of the ongoing troubles at L'Association that I have now seen is this piece by Quentin Girard in the French news daily, Liberation. The title of the piece is "Civil War at L'Association," and that should give you a sense of the tone. The article is very long and extremely thorough. I would recommend it strongly. I just re-read the article through Google Translate and it does a very good job of capturing the tone of Girard's article.

Girard paints a terrible image of the events on Monday. Name-calling, grandstanding, and legal threats. He writes that "there is not a good side and a bad side," a line that is likely to annoy both sides equally. The problem now is that there has been a hardening of feelings that seems unlikely to be easily resolved. A number of parties have attempted to act as mediators between the conflicted parties -- ActuaBD cites Emmanuel Guibert, Etienne Lecroart and Morvandiau -- but, apparently, to very little success judging by the comments made from the stage on Monday.

The most optimistic coverage of the meeting can be found on the website established to support the striking employees. This minute by minute review of the day's events glosses over a lot of the drama that Girard's article foregrounds, stressing, in its conclusion, the way that the founders are able to continue a friendly relationship at the bar despite the yelling that seems to have characterized much of the afternoon. This article highlights better than any other the demands of the six original founders who were elected to the board, including a desire, stated by Killoffer, to resort control of L'Association to its seven original founders temporarily and then, after a transition period, to elect both a new board and an enlarged editorial committee that would include other authors connected to the publisher, a suggestion that Jean-Christophe Menu, at the meeting, opposes.

Both pieces are well worth your time. Whether one comes away optimistic or pessimistic of the future of L'Asso, it is very clear that nothing has been resolved and that whatever structure does emerge over the coming months will be quite different from what has preceded it. Whether that will be for better or worse remains to be seen.
 
posted 10:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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