The 15-person editorial staff of Cahiers du Cinema quit in protest of the magazine having been sold to a group of tech tycoons and film producers. The staff of Cahiers (including editor-in-chief Stéphane Delorme) resigned Thursday afternoon claiming that the new owners would “create a conflict of interest for a critical publication…whatever articles are published, there would be a suspicion of interference.”
The staffers were also taken aback by the new owners’ insistences that the 70-year-old publication be refurbished “into a more relaxed and fashionable read.” In other words, they want Cahiers, which nary has an online presence, to get with the program and modernize itself to the 21st century. Yeah, fat chance.
Cahiers du Cinema, which started in 1951, will always be known as the birthplace of the French nouvelle vague. Its closest American counterpart, Film Comment, is approaching its 50th anniversary, having begun publishing in 1972. Its purist way-of-thinking about not just cinema, but journalism as well, has rendered it a dinosaur magazine, but a prestigious one at that.
Sadly, this is the world we live in today, as all legendary magazines have to eventually be shut down due to the inevitable advent of online journalism.