Cherchez la presse

After probably getting myself black-listed from a number of local and then deliberately out-of-the-way press kiosks in Paris, trying to locate a special edition issue of Le Magazine littéraire, I let out a joyful "Eeek!" when I came across this web trouvaille:

Trouver la presse

It's a sad but universal fact that print journalism is suffering like a beached whale in the face of on-line newspapers and the ubiquity of hot spots; who wants the inky fingers and necessity of a recycle bin that comes with purchasing and reading the unwieldy paper daily, when you can flip open your feather-weight laptop in the middle of a soon-to-be smoke-free café and catch up on current affairs - for free?

Unromantic as electronic articles may be (I prefer the ritual of unfolding and creasing the morning paper over tartines and coffee to hovering over a glowing screen and clicking away), even French PDG's are biting their nails over the perilous state of their pubs' chiffre d'affaires- when they aren't being boycotted by their own journalists, of course.

Press kiosks across France are disappearing at a rate alarming enough to incite the NMPP to get creative and use its worst enemy - the web- to its benefit. The hope seems to be that with www.trouverlapresse.com, lazy Parisians like yours truly will rediscover the joys of inquiring about the distribution details of their favorite publication. And relinquishing the luxury of a very efficient lap-warmer for long hours spent in the jake.

image courtesy of Senateur Sud