On 30 March, Prisma Media’s management announced that it was cutting 40% of its workforce. The International and European Federations of Journalists (IFJ-EFJ) have joined their affiliates SNJ, SNJ-CGT and CFDT-journalistes in condemning this as “a bloodbath”.
The news came suddenly on 30 March: the management of Prisma Media (Capital, Télé-Loisirs, GEO, Voici, Femme Actuelle…), France’s leading magazine publisher, announced a new – and wrongly named – ‘job protection plan’ (PSE) of unprecedented severity. In total, 261 jobs are at risk of being cut, representing nearly 40% of the company’s total workforce.
This plan follows a collective termination agreement in 2024 (27 jobs) and an initial PSE in July 2025 affecting 54 jobs. This PSE, which is still ongoing, was struck down by the Administrative Court of Pontoise in December 2025, and the appeal hearing will take place on 14 April in Versailles.
The proposed ‘reorganisation’ is a real bloodbath. It involves the discontinuation of several Prisma titles (GEO Histoire Hors série, Ça m’intéresse Questions et Réponses, Docteur Good…) and the closure of entire departments, such as production and logistic management, responsible for printing and distributing publications.
Management justified this plan on the grounds of structural economic difficulties, despite the fact that Prisma Media achieved a turnover of €302 million in 2025 and recorded a positive operating profit (EBITA) of €6 million. These results do not justify the largest lay-off in the history of the country’s magazine press. This profit, product of the employees’ hard work, is considered insufficient by the majority shareholder, Vincent Bolloré, who is clearly less concerned about Le JDD/JDDNews’s losing €7 million a year.
This plan strikes at the heart of the news industry, with more than 90 journalists being let go, not counting all the freelance workers, who are not considered part of the company by management. Said management cites the emergence of generative AI and the decline in web traffic to justify the mass lay-off, while it is responsible for the company’s deterioration by outsourcing editorial coordination and content production to external agencies.
After appointing Serge Nedjar (head of CNews) and Gérald Brice-Viret (head of Canal+) to lead the editorial teams, Louis Hachette Groupe (LHG) began implementing a rapid-fire restructuring. This is the third wave of layoffs since the group was bought out by the Breton billionaire in 2021, with staff numbers set to fall from nearly 900 at the time of the takeover to just under 400 if this proposed plan goes ahead.
The objective is clear: purge the editorial teams, break up the workforce, bleed the group dry and instil a climate of terror to impose a reactionary editorial line, as was done at i-Télé (now CNews) and JDD.
In the face of this direct attack, the time has come for unity. The SNJ, the SNJ-CGT and the CFDT-Journalistes are calling on the whole industry, the Ministry of Culture and the Union of Magazine Publishers (SEPM), to mobilise against a plan that threatens the magazine press ecosystem. “We refuse to endorse the so-called ‘support measures’ of a plan whose sole aim is to dismantle our livelihood. Our objective is indeed to save Prisma Media from the certain demise that Bolloré has in store for it. We will not allow a billionaire to destroy our lives and the independence of our publications to satisfy his political and financial ambitions,” the trade unions declared.
The IFJ and the EFJ stated: “We express our full solidarity with the journalists and all employees of Prisma Media. We call on the French authorities, the Ministry of Culture and all stakeholders in the sector to intervene to protect press diversity and the jobs that sustain it. We fully support the joint appeal by our affiliates, the SNJ, the SNJ-CGT and the CFDT-Journalistes, during this difficult time.”
Source: EFJ
