Au revoir Cambodge Soir

via CAAI

Monday, 27 September 2010 15:39 Post Staff

Cambodge Soir, Phnom Penh’s weekly French-language newspaper that also publishes online, has lost its financial backing and will close its doors after printing its final issue on Thursday, executive editor Jerome Morinière said Monday.

“The directors of the company withdrew from their French adventure that, in this time of economic crisis, has become too expensive,” Morinière said in a statement posted on the paper’s website.

Originally launched as a thrice-weekly publication in 1995, Cambodge Soir became a daily in 1997.

Following the mass resignation of staff members in June 2007, the paper was shuttered for a number of months before relaunching in October that year in its current weekly print format, Cambodge Soir Hebdo.

Last year, Cambodge Soir’s Ung Chansophea won the Francophone Press Freedom Award for an article on battered women, becoming the first Asian journalist to earn the honour.

Morinière’s said the conditions for the dismissal of the paper’s 30 employees was being negotiated.