Within a few days, Nicolas Barré was able to celebrate his tenth anniversary at the head of the editorial staff of the economic daily The echoes. To everyone’s surprise, however, the editorial staff learned on Tuesday, March 21, that he was no longer his boss. One of the two deputy editorial directors, François Vidal – the second is Dominique Seux, columnist on France Inter and France 2 – will take over as interim pending the appointment of a successor.
At the 9 a.m. editorial conference, which Nicolas Barré attended as usual, there was no indication of the confusing turn the day was about to take. At 10:30 am, in fact, the information site The letter a asserted: “Bernard Arnault arrives as the editorial director of Echos ». “From there, Nicolas seemed to vanish”testifies an editor who, like many, “fell off his chair”. While no information was filtering yet, the absence of denial and the impossibility of contacting the person concerned took the place, for the writing, of implicit confirmation.
But at the 3 p.m. editorial conference, shifted by a quarter of an hour, François Vidal always assured, without convincing, that he was not aware of anything. The journalists threatening to put down the pen if they were left waiting, an appointment with Pierre Louette was organized at 5 p.m. The boss of the Les Echos-Le Parisien group then explained that the management “managed with Nicolas for two or three weeks the prospect of his replacement”even if “nothing was ready or completely closed”reports a participant.
A formulation probably intended to circumvent, he translates, the procedures put in place at the time of the purchase of the title by the CEO of LVMH, Bernard Arnault, in 2007. Indeed, the dismissal of the editorial director must be approved by the majority of the supervisory board, including at least two of the three independent directors co-appointed by the management of the group and the Society of Journalists (SDJ), as recalled by the latter in a press release published at the start of the evening. “This is the reason why we are told that Nicolas is tired and that he wants to take the field”deciphers an employee.
Articles likely to have displeased Bernard Arnault
Above all, Pierre Louette refuted the hypothesis according to which “shareholder” would have been the cause of this eviction. During the day, in fact, the elected staff had collected internal testimonies reporting articles likely to have displeased Bernard Arnault.
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