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1/25/09

EU-Digest/AFP: France to offer all 18-year-olds a free daily copy of the newspaper of their choice

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France will offer all 18-year-olds a free daily copy of the newspaper of their choice

France will offer all 18-year-olds a free daily copy of the newspaper of their choice, President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday, announcing a package of measures to help the beleaguered press. French newspapers were already struggling to compete for readers with the Internet and broadcast journalism even before the economic downturn took a bite out of advertising revenue, and several are close to collapse. In response to the crisis, which some commentators have branded a threat to French democratic debate, the government organised a national conference on the future of the newspaper industry. "The habit of reading the press takes hold at a very young age," Sarkozy said, presenting the conclusions of several months of talks to an audience of media executives, journalists and officials in Paris.

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