Just paper and ink: A gotcha journalists devotion to print

True,Le Canard Enchaîné has a webpage,but there is little on it beyond images of old front pages and the suggestion that you buy the paper on Wednesdays at your news stand. Le Canard Enchaîné is about paper and ink, it says.

Angeli and his crew of 16 journalists fewer than half of them writing on computers are probably the most successful gotcha journalists in the country.

Angeli pulled a small index card from his black book a running list of this years triumphs. There was the public official who charged about $16,800 worth of cigars to the state and the one who lied about the size of his house to get around zoning laws in Provence.

And,of course,the former foreign minister,Michèle Alliot-Marie,forced to step down after the newspaper revealed she had been vacationing in Tunisia with associates of the former dictator,Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali,and offering him French tear gas even as the pro-democracy protests were under way.

It has been an interesting year, said Angeli. Two top officials had to step down. Two did not get reappointed.

Angeli still clearly gets excited at the prospect of revealing the greed and stupidity of government officials.

This is what we do, he said. We reveal things that are hidden.

He has worked at Le Canard Enchaîné for 40 years and is the author of some of its biggest stories and a half-dozen books. He is not one to mess with a winning formula. The paper looks much the same eight pages,lots of cartoons as when he took charge 20 years ago.

If we put our stories up on the Internet,who would buy the paper on Wednesday? he said. We believe in print.

Frances large daily newspapers are flailing. Le Mondes circulation has been declining. The left-leaning Libération,and right mouthpiece,Le Figaro,are not doing much better. But Angelis paper a mix of investigative pieces,facetious opinion pieces,fictitious columns by politicians and no advertising is seen as lacking a political bent. Its circulation has risen 32 per cent since Sarkozy took office in 2008 and was nicknamed by the newspaper Sarkoléon. He believes government workers have such a low opinion of Sarkozy that there are more leaks than usual.

He chuckles,eager to show off the spot in an upstairs office where agents from Frances domestic intelligence agency,disguised as workmen,tried to bury listening devices in the wall in 1973,shortly after Angeli had landed one of his biggest scoops. He had published the tax returns of the prime minister,Jacques Chaban-Delmas,which showed that he had barely paid any taxes. The workmen were caught by a reporter. It was Le Canard Enchaînés own Watergate,known in France as the Plumbers affair.

The hole in the wall remains.

In November,he revealed that Sarkozy was personally involved in spying on journalists who produced stories embarrassing to his administration.

Angeli says the day may come when he gives up the executive editorship,but he has no intention of giving up writing.

What would I do? he said. Get out my slippers? No way.SUZANNE DALEY