Short answers, pulled from the story.
Le Monde was founded by Hubert Beuve-Méry, who set up the limited liability company on the 11th of December 1944 with capital of 200,000 francs. The first issue was published on the 18th of December 1944, dated the 19th, and ran to a single double-sided page.
Le Monde is generally located, albeit reductively, on the centre-left, a stance noted by Radio France and a 2010 academic work. In an April 2022 Ifop survey, 48% of regular readers had voted for left-wing candidates in the first round of the 2012 presidential election and 27% for Emmanuel Macron.
Le Monde is owned by the Groupe Le Monde, which is 75% held by the holding company Le Monde Libre and 25% by the Pôle d'Indépendance du Monde. The shareholding notably includes Xavier Niel and Matthieu Pigasse, alongside employees, trade unions, and associations.
Le Monde is the most widely read paid national daily in France, with 2.44 million readers in 2021 and around 500,000 subscribers. As of the 31st of October 2023 it had 592,000 subscribers, including 517,000 digital-only subscribers.
Le Monde is published in Paris in the early afternoon, from around 1 p.m., carrying the following day's date, and reaches other cities later or the next morning. Editorial deadlines fall in the morning at 10:30 a.m., so it has in practice become a midday newspaper while still being called an evening daily.
In January 2025 Le Monde announced it was leaving X, citing the intensification of activism by Elon Musk and the growing toxicity of exchanges on the platform. The newsroom said the decision was part of an effort to preserve editorial independence and avoid an environment harmful to public debate.