France-Soir’s interest has been piqued by the apparent ability of French News to make money in what is becoming less and less a niche market. The average readership for its monthly edition is more than 110,000, from a circulation of around 40,000, and unlike most newspapers in French, its audience is becoming younger and more diverse. This is a reflection of how scarcely any region of France is unaffected by the influx of non-French speaking residents, not just the British, but also new arrivals from the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia.

 

France-Soir is said to be planning a weekly edition, and if it goes on sale, French News, too, will become a weekly, head to head. French News has already begun producing regional supplements, so far for Aquitaine, Brittany and Poitou-Charentes, with an emphasis on local news and features. Its editor, the impeccably French Miranda Neame, welcomes the idea of competition, believing that their modest overheads give French News a significant advantage. They have more than one hundred correspondents throughout France, most more than happy to see themselves in print without significant payment. France-Soir, wedded to professional freelance rates, would find it prohibitively expensive to set up a comparable network.

French News began back in 1987 simply as The News, catering in particular for the growing number of arrivals from the UK. Many Britons found French impossible to master and had problems in relating to their neighbours. They were often ignorant of what was happening in their adopted country, unwittingly breaking French rules and regulations, and unable to find out about their rights and obligations by themselves.

The intention of French News has always been to improve these expatriates' quality of life, by helping them to learn more about France and the French, making them aware of legislation affecting them and by providing links to other people in similar situations.

 

One of the ironies of the new-found interest expressed by France-Soir in competing with French News is that the Paris-based newspaper has been among those most vociferous about the ‘ghettos’ allegedly created by foreign, especially British, residents. The average Brit, it claims, rises to the ‘Today’ programme on BBC Radio Four, switches to Sky television courtesy of a very tall (and probably illegal) satellite aerial, and never reads or speaks a single word of French if he or she can help it. The ex-patriates, if many French residents in small towns and villages are to be believed, scorn the idea of mixing with the indigenous population. Instead they form cliques growing so rapidly that in some places they threaten to swamp the French altogether.

 

Some foreigners rub salt into the wound by competing locally for tourist custom, opening restaurants and offering bed and breakfast facilities without registering with the local chamber of commerce, much to the undisguised fury of native French hoteliers and restaurateurs.

French News takes a lot of flak for making the life of expatriates more agreeable, in effect, keeping them in France when they might otherwise have returned home in despair, beaten by the inimitable French bureaucracy. Its letters pages are full of fierce debates about the intricacies of minimising French tax on UK pensions and claiming the UK winter fuel allowance, even for Brits that live in a part of France where the temperature always stays firmly above freezing.

 

But French News is much more than that. Subtly, and appealingly, it introduces its readers to the best features of French culture and society. As a microcosm of what matters in France, especially from an ex-patriot perspective, it offers an entertaining insight for all renters of Dominique’s Villas. Any shopkeeper selling British newspapers will stock French News, although, because of the passions stirred up by the influx of foreign residents, he may well keep it quietly under the counter.