On January 1, 2025, the distribution of national and international press will cease on newsstands in French Polynesia: Hachette Pacifique, the only local distributor, will stop their importation.
“It hurts my heart to see that all this is going to disappear,” laments Monique Tautia as she places her latest delivery of monthly magazines on the shelves of the press house where she works in Pirae, on the island of Tahiti.
Aged 62, she spent four decades putting away magazines without ever reading them. “I only look at the titles and I see fashions passing: for example, history magazines, we hardly had any 40 years ago.”
Soon there will be almost no magazines at all. The community's sole distributor, Hachette Pacifique announced in a simple note to tobacconists that it would stop delivering national and international press after December 31.
The company did not wish to respond to AFP but in March, it requested financial assistance from the French High Commission in Polynesia, arguing that the service was “largely in deficit”.
The distribution crisis is not new in the immense territory of the Pacific which extends over an area comparable to that of the European Union. By 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, daily newspapers had stopped being delivered.
In October 2024, the distribution by air of weeklies and monthlies had also ceased but they continued to be delivered by boat, more than a month late in France.
The local government, for its part, is not moved by this shortage of supply. Questioned by AFP, he simply stated that the community “does not have to replace private actors”.
– Only one daily –
In Tahitian newsagents, the approximately 600 titles still on sale will therefore disappear from January 1st. Only a few local magazines and the only daily newspaper in Polynesia, Tahiti Info, will remain.
Director of the press distribution giant France Messagerie, which ships 700,000 newspapers and magazines every day in mainland France and overseas, Eric Matton told AFP he was studying with his competitor Messageries Lyonnaises de presse (MLP) “the possibility of organizing alternative distribution via New Caledonia”.
But distribution in New Caledonia was itself very affected by the riots which affected the archipelago after the attempt to adopt a constitutional reform project aimed at modifying the electorate, leaving doubt about this possibility. .
Laurent Martinez, Monique Tautia's boss, is worried that he will soon no longer be able to keep his employee in the small family business that bears his mother's first name, Kina.
“The press represents 20% of my turnover, but it is also a flagship product for regular customers who come for a magazine then buy something else,” he explains.
His shop has already diversified: it offers a press department, but also stationery, games of chance, tobacco, a reprography service and even ice cream.
And he still has a slim hope: the printing of national titles by a local printer.
