The ax has fallen for magazine 303: a pure and simple threat of disappearance in 2026. Because the editorial team confirms today, November 21, 2024, “an alarming budgetary trade-off: a drastic 50% reduction in the operating subsidy in 2025, before its withdrawal in 2026”.
Read also: Budget cuts: the Loire" rel="tag">Pays de la Loire Region abandons local missions
Calculator in hand, on an annual budget of €650,000, the Pays de la Loire Region, which had granted the sum of €319,200 in 2024, decided to reduce this to €160,000 in 2025. Then to zero in 2026, which could result in the death sentence of this journal born in 1984, under the regional presidency of the RPR Olivier Guichard. “The grant allowed 303 to exist without advertisements”, a magazine which owed its name to the addition of the mineralogical numbers of the five Loire departments.
Five jobs and nearly 200 authors
“We are going to mobilize our signatures, perhaps through a forum, and call on elected officials and stakeholders in this area to mobilize to maintain financial support for 303 », we explain from the editorial side. “It is an economic engine for the territories” with a team of five permanent employees, and nearly 200 authors, as well as “ annual participation in around 60 events, trade fairs, conferences and exhibitions. 303 contributes to regional influence well beyond the borders of Pays de la Loire. » The magazine distributes 2,000 copies for the quarterly issues, sold at €15 for 96 pages, and 3,000 copies for the annual special issue, sold at €28 for 256 pages.
“What men and women of the West do”
In the editorial of issue 0 of the magazine in 1984, the president of the Region, Olivier Guichard, wrote: “For the first time, a Region is equipped with a quality tool, both in terms of content and form, open to research and tradition, and attentive to imagination. “303” will thus make known, not without surprising sometimes, inside and outside the administrative limits of the five departments, what the men and women of the West do so that life is also a style. »
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