FRANCE'S second-largest economic daily, La Tribune, has suspended debt repayments while it seeks new investors. Le Monde, the country's greatest newspaper, found new investors in June but seems to have lost its way and is looking for a new editorial director. Bakchich, a satirical weekly, said on January 11th that it will close for want of funds.

France's national newspapers are shrivelling. The eight main national dailies together sell 1.2m copies a day—about the same as Britain's slumping Daily Mirror. News-stand sales in November were 10% lower than a year earlier. For La Tribune the fall was a disastrous 33%. The overall drop in sales, including postal and delivered subscriptions, was less steep.

Christophe Deloire, director of the Centre for Journalist Training in Paris, traces the problem to France's first newspaper, La Gazette, founded in 1631 under the auspices of Cardinal Richelieu. Since then “the French press has been dependent on power,” he says; this has blunted its edge. That dependence was underlined in 2008 when President Nicolas Sarkozy summoned an “Estates General” of the press. More money was thrown at the problem, including free subscriptions for young readers and handouts for new printing machines. The downward trend continued.

Ownership presents further image problems. Les Echos, the top business daily, is owned by a luxury-goods magnate, Bernard Arnault. Le Figaro is owned by a defence baron, Serge Dassault. Le Monde's three new investors are a banker, a web billionaire and another seller of luxury goods. Such proprietorial interests trouble some journalists, particularly given the papers' weak finances. “How could I write about banks at Le Monde?” says one who turned down an offer to work there.

La Tribune, which was owned by Mr Arnault until he acquired its rival, Les Echos, has perhaps a year to sort itself out. It has long been doubtful that there is room for a second business daily in France. Le Monde found new investors fairly quickly, as did Libération, a left-wing daily, which in 2006 took just three months to bring in fresh investment. But Libération had the advantage of an existing 39% shareholder, Edouard de Rothschild, who drew others. La Tribune's managers talk of six, unnamed, interested investors.

As elsewhere, France's dailies face the challenge of the web. Mr Deloire criticises Le Monde for not integrating its print and online newsrooms. Some of his students are spending time at Mediapart, a web newspaper started by Edwy Plenel, a former editorial director of Le Monde. Mediapart is dedicated to anti-establishment scoops and reckons it can survive if it can sell 40,000 subscriptions at €9 ($12) a month. Last June it hit the jackpot by breaking news of the Bettencourt affair, a scandal with links to the presidency. Subscriptions soared from 25,000 before June to 47,000 at the end of the year.

Is this the future? Even Mr Plenel seems doubtful. His model depends partly on scoops and on getting surfers to pay for online content, which has proved tough the world over. A year ago he explored the idea of a print edition, but France's unionised distribution system made the costs prohibitive. Last summer he briefly discussed a partnership with La Tribune, “but now I think it's too late,” he says.