The Reunion press experienced a major event on July 31 : the Journal de l’île de La Réunion has ceased publication, after 73 years of existence.
The Saint-Denis commercial court ruled that the daily no longer had a chance of survival, due to the collapse of its readership and advertising revenue and liabilities estimated at 9 million euros. The whole group (Jir Hi, Clickanoo, Straight Verse, Advertising Space and Press Distribution Management OI) was placed in compulsory liquidation. 75 employees, including 18 journalists, lost their job.
The Journal de l’île de La Réunion was created in 1951 by Fernand Cazal, to gradually become the unofficial organ of the departmentalist Reunion right. Taken over in 1991 by the Hersant group, the title has been marked since that date by the personality of its editorial director, Jacques Tillier, who had worked for the far-right weekly Minute. JIR was bought in 2008 by Abdul Cadjee, as the daily written press began to suffer from reader disaffection and competition from online media. Since 1996, the daily newspaper had nevertheless created Clicanoo, in the internet version, but the revenues generated by this subsidiary were insufficient to compensate for the drop in those of the paper version. Le Quotidien remains the only printed newspaper distributed in Reunion and is also fighting to regain its financial balance after having escaped liquidation last April.
