Le Point

• 1. Introduction

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  Le Point is a French weekly magazine born from a walkout. In September 1972, a group of journalists who had left the editorial team of L'Express founded an entirely new publication in Paris. Their former employer, L'Express, was owned at the time by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, a member of parliament for the centrist Parti Radical. The founders walked away and built something different. What drove them to start over? What kind of magazine did they build? And how did a publication launched on uncertain footing become one of only three major French news magazines?

• 2. A Difficult Birth

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  The founding editorial team included Jacques Duquesne, Henri Trinchet, Pierre Billard, Robert Franc, and Georges Suffert, with Claude Imbert directing the operation. The start was, by the magazine's own account, fairly difficult. Financial backing came from Hachette, which gave the venture the stability it needed to grow. Management roles fell to Olivier Chevrillon and Philippe Ramond. Despite the rocky opening months, Le Point quickly positioned itself as a direct challenger to L'Express, the very publication its founders had departed. The company operating the magazine, Société d'exploitation de l'hebdomadaire Le Point, set up its head office in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, where it published on Thursdays.

• 3. Modeling the Greats

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  By 2001, Le Point redesigned its logo and overall layout, signaling a new phase of ambition. The weekly recruited journalists from the broader Parisian press and leaned into its capacity to reshape the format of the French political magazine. Its models were explicit: it looked closely at Time Magazine and Newsweek. That American frame of reference set Le Point apart from purely French traditions of political journalism, giving it a more internationally legible identity. The conservative, centre-right editorial stance it maintained came without formal party affiliation, a position that allowed it to speak to a wide readership without becoming a factional organ.

• 4. Ownership and Power

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  Gaumont, the French cinema group, purchased Le Point in 1981. More than a decade later, in 1993, Generale Occidentale acquired 82.5% of the publisher Sebdo from Gaumont. Then, in 1997, the magazine passed to its current owner: Artémis, a French investment group founded and owned by billionaire businessman François Pinault. Pinault is known far beyond the media world, and his acquisition of Le Point placed the magazine within a broader portfolio of cultural and commercial interests. Franz-Olivier Giesbert became chief executive officer in 2000 and remained in that role until the 18th of January 2014, when Etienne Gernelle replaced him. Giesbert did not disappear from the masthead; he stayed on as an adviser, continuing to write editorials and articles.

• 5. Circulation Over Time

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  In 1981, Le Point's circulation reached 336,000 copies. By 1987 it had dipped to 311,000, then recovered slightly to 320,000 in 1988. The magazine's readership peaked in the years 2007-2009, when circulation ranged from roughly 435,000 to 443,000 copies per year, with 2007 recording 443,956 copies. From that high point the trend reversed. By 2013, circulation had slipped to 417,940 copies. By 2020 it had fallen further to 279,032 copies. That long decline mirrors the wider contraction in print magazine readership across Europe, a pattern Le Point shares with many legacy weekly publications.

• 6. A 2025 Controversy

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  In February 2025, a journalist named Erwan Seznec, employed by Le Point, was alleged to have contacted a French editor of an online reference project with a threat to publish that editor's personal information. The dispute centered on an edit describing Le Point as "populist" and as "increasingly close to the right-wing Identitarian movement." Seznec denied that he had issued a doxing threat, saying he had simply asked for corrections. Le Point stood behind Seznec, characterizing the edits and the accusations as a "series of malicious acts" and calling the sources cited in support of the edits unreliable. The episode drew attention to the tension between press institutions and the open editing communities that write about them, a conflict that Le Point's own editorial stance made particularly charged.