Le Petit Parisien
periodical published in Paris
Le Petit Parisien (French pronunciation: [lə pəti paʁizjɛ̃]) was a prominent French newspaper during the Third Republic. It was published between 1876 and 1944, and its circulation was more than two million copies after the First World War.
Publishing
Despite its name, the paper was circulated across France, and records showed claims that it had the biggest newspaper circulation in the world at this time. In May 1927, the paper fell into a media prank set up by Jean-Paul Sartre and his friends, announcing that Charles Lindbergh was going to be awarded as École Normale Supérieure honorary student. During the Second World War the paper, under the editorship of Claude Jeantet, was the official voice of the Vichy regime and in 1944 was briefly published by Jeantet in Nazi Germany before closing down.
Background
Prior to the twentieth century, newspapers were largely political such as Paris's La Presse. This is largely because newspapers held close ties with political parties in order to profit. However, this led to a stunt in circulation. The creation of Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper Le Matin inspired a new type of journalism. It prompted the start of Le Petit Journal and Le Petit Parisien which launched French journalism into a mass medium.
The public source identifies “Le Petit Parisien” as periodical published in Paris. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Petit, Parisien and periodical.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q831299. VIAF identifies the subject as 139928398. 5 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1876, 1944 and 1927.
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This entry incorporates text from “Le Petit Parisien” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.