Passed into the bosom of Bolloré, “Capital” quantifies its loss of freedom

One fine morning in December 2020, the employees of Prisma Media received a hell of a Christmas present: the German publisher Bertelsmann, creator of the group which publishes “Capital”, “Voici”, “Télé Loisirs”, “Géo”, “Ça m ‘interested ” …, gave it up without warning to Vivendi, in other words to Vincent Bolloré. On October 31, 2022, the “departure counter” for journalists closed: this is a procedure that opens automatically when a press group changes hands, allowing journalists who do not want the new owner – or who simply have other plans – to leave with a nice compensation, depending on their years of presence. And it is the haemorrhage: 183 journalists out of 400 left the group. Its communication director Frédéric Vallois reacts:

“Since 1978, there had never been a departure plan at Prisma Media. 50% of those leaving were over 58 years old, seniority allowed them to leave under advantageous financial conditions. »

Of course, the amount of the check played but not only. At “Capital”, where half of the editorial staff took their clicks and slaps, the months spent in the bosom of Vivendi served as a foil. They were peppered with a dozen editorial frictions of unequal importance ranging from a request for proofreading by the management of Prisma to the deletion – before or after publication – of articles. A radical change from Bertelsmann practices: such pressure or such phone call