Growing similarities of the Ouest-France and Le Courrier de l'Ouest' websites

Membres du même groupe de presse depuis 2008, les deux titres couvrant l'actualité locale, Le Courrier de l'Ouest d'un côté et Ouest-France de l'autre, disposent chacun d'un site internet. Si les supports papiers sont restés visuellement très distincts l'un de l'autre, il n'en va pas de même des sites internet qui mettent en ligne et dans des termes identiques les mêmes informations.

If there are always two newspapers covering Angers news with different points of view, those are shrinking, especially on their respective websites. Similar articles are published on both of them. On July 8th, www.courrierdelouest.fr and www.angers.maville.com dedicated identical coverages to the problems generated by the Biopole facility, the transfer of the Velocité agency from the Paul Bert street towards the Saint-Laud railway station and the performance of the singer Christophe Miossec in Angers in November.

Le Courrier de l'Ouest was bought in 2008 by his rival, the Sipa Ouest France group, first daily newspaper, to the Dassault, owner of Le Figaro. The two titles were considered for a longtime as political adversaries, Le Courrier being considered conservative while Ouest-France were rather progressive. And the main question was will Le Courrier survive to its absorption?

A few months ago, the editors of Le Courrier questionned their management about "the contribution of their newspaper to the Sipa Ouest-France group and the future that one reserves to Le Courrier". At that time, the Angers editors feared the sharing of the news between the two titles, and the confinement of their title to less interesting news fot the local audience. On the internet field, another strategy would be implemented : the erasing of the differences in the respective contents.