All week, the Bayard group has been in turmoil. The announcement, Monday, November 25, of the recruitment of the former right-hand man of ultra-conservative billionaire Pierre-Edouard Stérin, Alban du Rostu, to the position of director of strategy, ignited the powder within the children's press and publishing company. This publishes the Catholic daily The Crossthe weekly The Pilgrimthe monthly Our time and flagship titles from the children's press (Apple of Api, Astrapi, Okapi, I like to read…).
Employees see this as a desire to guide the group's line of openness and social Catholicism, due to the pedigree of this new recruit: Alban du Rostu participated in the launch of Mr. Stérin's political project, called “Pericles”, aiming to wage the battle of ideas in the service of identity-based, conservative and liberal values. This designation follows the decision, by the new president of Bayard, to join forces in particular with the conservative Vincent Bolloré in the purchase of the ESJ Paris journalism school, a private school not recognized by the profession.
Already the choice of François Morinière to lead Bayard – appointed in spring 2024, he took office on 1is November – was interpreted internally as a desire to recall the religious fundamentals of the group, and in particular to its youth branch, the most profitable, after a change at the head of the congregation in the summer of 2023. The induction of Mr. Morinière , close to Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, was also the subject of a mass organized by the Assumptionists, according to information collected by The World. An unusual fact, even within this Catholic press group.
Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers Alban du Rostu, the former right-hand man of Pierre-Edouard Stérin, recruited by the Bayard group
Read later
“No reactions in our editors, no fascists in our premises”chanted 200 to 300 employees in front of the Bayard site in Montrouge (Hauts-de-Seine), Thursday, November 28 at the beginning of the afternoon, during an hour of walkout, before a possible strike next week. Never before seen, according to several employees, almost surprised by the vigor of the mobilization in a press group which does not have the culture of confrontation.
At the same time, in Toulouse, another gathering took place in front of the premises of the Milan Presse subsidiary (Pass by, 1day1news). The day before, during the opening of the Montreuil Children's Book Fair (Seine-Saint-Denis), a banner “At Bayard, no place for the extreme right” had been displayed on the Bayard jeunesse stand by several employees and Mr. Morinière had been questioned by the author Murielle Szac. “Without the authors, you will have nothing left to sell”she warned him.
You have 63.54% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
