Marine Le Pen Asserts Controversial Positions on EU, Russia
The AAPA kicked off 2017 with a news-making event on Jan. 6 when nearly 60 members met with one of France's top political personalities - National Front party leader and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. The timing was ideal, with the French presidential elections just four months away and Ms. Le Pen increasingly tipped to secure a place in the runoff round of voting on May 7. After Brexit…
Here's to a Memorable 2017
Dear Member, As we turn the page on what has been a very eventful year, I want to take a minute of your time to wish you all a positive year on the personal and professional levels. The past 12 months have kept you busy chasing news, and much of it was bad. The coming year will be interesting politically on both sides of the Atlantic, and your workload won't diminish. Au contraire... One of the…
Report on the AAPA’s Annual General Meeting Dec. 16
Twenty-five members attended our AGM on Friday, Dec. 16, at the Brasserie de l'Assemblée in the 7th, which started at 7 pm, lasted one hour and was followed by some socializing over drinks and hors-d’oeuvres. 1. President’s report President David Pearson opened the meeting by looking back at 2016, which with 18 events equaled 2015’s record number. Membership increased and finances remained…
Le Canard Enchainé Celebrates 100 Years of Needling the Establishment
PARIS—Drawing on his large stock of entertaining anecdotes, Erik Emptaz, the editor of Le Canard Enchainé, looked back over the French satirical weekly’s 100 years of existence when he met the AAPA on Dec. 7. A solid turnout at the Bonne Bière heard Emptaz comment on a vast range of subjects, including the paper’s independence from advertisers and big business shareholders, the recent surprises…
France’s State of Emergency Has Huge Economic, Social Costs
It cannot enforce its recommendations, but the French government’s human rights advisory body has been vocal and sometimes effective in criticizing such hot-button subjects as France’s ongoing state of emergency, the fate of migrants, and the right of Muslim women to wear head-to-toe covering burkinis on public beaches, its head says. For Christine Lazerges, a professor of penal law at Sorbonne…
Islam Foundation Head Says Muslims Should Try More to Integrate
France’s decision to name a non-Muslim to head its Foundation for Islam, in the wake of the terrorist attack during Bastille Day celebrations in Nice this summer, was always controversial. Since then, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, a hardline secularist, has not backed away from expressing even more divisive views. He told a group of two dozen AAPA members on Nov. 7 that it was Muslims who needed to…
Freelancers Get Expert Advice at AAPA/NUJ Joint Seminar
How do you survive and prosper as a freelance writer in France at a time when the media industry in undergoing such rapid change? Participants at our third freelance seminar (the first two took place in 1995 and 2004) on Oct. 15 heard some of the answers. The five-hour session at the Maison de Métallos in the 11th arrondissement was the second freelance seminar organised jointly by the AAPA and…
New-Look American Institution in Paris Gets the Once-Over
The recent renovation of the American Library was done with the user in mind, Director Charles Trueheart told an early bird group of AAPA members and their guests over coffee and viennoiseries on Oct. 11. We met before the opening to the public at 10 AM in a spacious, carpeted downstairs book-lined meeting area, formerly a dark and forbidding basement for books. "The new plan provides a…
Young Audience Gives Standing Ovation at Paris Opera
Most of the audience looked as though it would have been better suited to a rock concert. Certainly not a preview of a new, modern-day production of Camille Saint-Saëns’ 19th-century opera Samson and Delilah at the Paris Opera Bastille on October 1. Not only were they young (under 28 years of age), but they had all bought tickets at the rock-bottom price of 10 euros each. The performance was…
AFP’s CEO Briefs AAPA on N. Korean Expansion
Opening a bureau in North Korea, arguably the world’s most secretive state, inevitably involves making compromises, Emmanuel Hoog, the CEO of Agence France-Presse, conceded in a meeting on Sept. 20 with the AAPA. AFP inaugurated its bureau in Pyongyang in early September in a deal with KCNA, North Korea’s official news agency, and it has a permanent staff there of a North Korean photographer and…