France Soir was founded as the underground paper
Défense de la France ("Defense of France") In March 1944, after multiple relocations, it was housed on three levels of an industrial building on rue Jean-Dolent, behind the
La Santé Prison, in Paris's XIVth arrondissement. After the liberation,
Paris-Soir, which with 1.7 million copies in 1936 was the leading French daily between the wars, forfeited its printing plant in Lyon due to its ambiguous behavior under occupation.
Pierre Lazareff, its former editor, had returned from the US and joined
Défense de la France in September 1944. The first issue of
France-Soir - Défense de la France was printed using
Paris-Soirs presses on 7 November 1944. The hyphenated name affiliated the old paper with that of the
French resistance. The paper's name was truncated to
France Soir after
World War II. The paper grew to be ranked among the country's (and the European continent's) most
circulated, reaching 1.5 million in 1955 with Pierre Lazareff as
chief editor. Early in the 21st century, circulation dropped below 90,000. Its circulation was 30,000 copies just before its closure in 2011.
Acquisition by Jean-Pierre Brunois and Olivier Rey In April 2006, the
Tribunal of Commerce in
Lille announced that the paper would become the property of
Jean-Pierre Brunois, a real-estate developer, and Olivier Rey, a former journalist for the paper. The tribunal had been overseeing the bankruptcy and bids for take over since October 2005, at which point the circulation had dropped to around 50,000. The decision lead to strike by the staff who were displeased with Brunois' plan to cut costs by firing many, and increase circulation by turning the paper into a
tabloid. One of the opposing bids, favored by the staff, was from
Arkadi Gaydamak, the owner of
The Moscow News, who had promised not to fire the staff. Due to the turbulence,
France Soir was not published for a month and a half. Brunois brought in bi-lingual British photographer
Jason Fraser to lead the tabloid remodelling of the paper.
Pugachyov ownership In March 2010,
France Soir was acquired by Alexander Pugachyov, son of Russian ex-billionaire
Sergey Pugachyov. The paper was relaunched in 2010, but its last print issue appeared on 13 December 2011, with the online version ending in July 2012 with the court-ordered bankruptcy of the company. During the liquidation process, the name
France-Soir was then bought by the group Mutualize Corporation SA. which relaunched the newspaper as a 100% online media.
Mutualize Corporation Mutualize Corporation SA. relaunched the newspaper as a 100% online media in 2016, reaching a peak audience in 2018. In August 2019, the site staff of four employees went on strike, and were eventually fired, but the website kept publishing content. ==Publishing of conspiracy theories==