Hubert Beuve-Mery; Founder of French Newspaper Le Monde

Hubert Beuve-Mery, who founded the independent Le Monde in 1944 at a time when other Parisian newspapers stood accused of Nazi sympathies and then meticulously nursed it into France’s most influential daily, has died at the age of 87, the newspaper announced Monday.

Beuve-Mery died Sunday night in Fontainebleau, where he had been hospitalized for the last week after a fall, Le Monde said.

“He was a great leader,” Jacques Fauvet, Beuve-Mery’s successor as editor-in-chief and publisher of Le Monde, said on French radio. “He had great independence of spirit and moral authority at the same time.”

The austere tabloid, its gray expanses only recently disturbed by photographs, became known for its authoritative and thorough coverage of foreign and domestic affairs, complete with footnotes in tiny print.

“Only a constant emulation between those who read a newspaper and those who edit it can permit the pursuit, with some chance of success, of this quest for truth, which is our principal reason for being,” Beuve-Mery wrote on his retirement in 1969.

Le Monde has always been left-of-center, but marked by an independence from political parties that was unusual in French journalism.

Under a complicated distribution of stock, the Le Monde staff has control of the newspaper. The staff members also elect the newspaper’s director, who serves as editor-in-chief and publisher.

Beuve-Mery was born Jan. 5, 1902, in Paris, where his father was a jeweler and watchmaker. He was correspondent for the Paris daily Le Temps in Prague from 1934-38, when he resigned in protest over the paper’s approval of the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.

When France was liberated in 1944, Le Temps and other prewar newspapers tainted by the occupation were not allowed to resume publication. Beuve-Mery and a small group of liberal journalists and intellectuals were asked to start a new newspaper in the old Le Temps building on the Boulevard des Italiens near the Paris Opera in an effort to rebuild French prestige.

They were encouraged by Gen. Charles de Gaulle, but De Gaulle later had his problems with the paper’s left-leaning approach to international affairs.

Beuve-Mery guided Le Monde’s fortunes for the next quarter of a century, writing occasional editorials under the pseudonym “Sirius.”

Still required reading for the influential throughout the French-speaking world, Le Monde’s influence in recent years has waned some as Frenchmen opted for more modern, brassier publications.

It survived a financial crisis in 1985 by selling about a 12% share in the newspaper to its readers.