The nervous young Frenchman sat in the centre of a book-lined room at the Sorbonne last Saturday afternoon, facing a jury of four professors, wirtes Lara Marlowe. A bust of Voltaire seemed to watch protectively over Jean Mercereau. His lovely Portuguese wife, Ana Luisa, sat frozen behind him, sharing each moment of anxiety. Nearly 20 other relatives, friends and academics came to hear Mr Mercereau defend his doctoral thesis, "Evolution and characteristics of an Irish quality newspaper: The Irish Times, 1859-1999".
Mr Mercereau devoted five years to studying this newspaper, and he probably knows as much about it as anyone alive. His work was "pioneering", said Prof Paul Brennan, who supervised the thesis at the University of Paris. "There is no work of this breadth on this newspaper in any language, even English. You are the first to cover this ground."
French university system
Prof Richard Deutsch saw Mr Mercereau's 547-page, two-volume work as a credit to the French university system. "I'm happy to see that Irish Studies are better in France than in Ireland, since no Irish student has yet addressed this subject."
Mr Mercereau said he had set out to explain how a newspaper "created in the mid-19th century by and for the Unionist, Protestant community of Dublin" came to be "recognised at the end of the 20th century as the principal newspaper of the Republic of Ireland, a country with a strong Catholic and nationalist tradition." To show how The Irish Times was transformed over its first 140 years of existence, Mr Mercereau quoted 154 editorials in his thesis. While this newspaper "never denied the existence of an Irish nation", he said, neither did it demand political independence for that nation. Initially, The Irish Times "was not radically opposed" to the constitutionalist, federalist movement which asked for greater autonomy from the 1870s. But it would condemn nationalism more firmly as that movement "became more Catholic, Gaelic, Republican and Anglophobe, and began to constitute a real threat in its eyes to the dominant Protestant class in the 1880s".
Partition and the foundation of the Free State changed The Irish Times forever, Mr Mercereau explained to his examiners. The division of the island "constituted in its eyes. . .a calamity, since it believed in an indivisible Ireland." Because it advocated a united Ireland within the British Empire, the newspaper was disappointed by the creation of the Free State, but like the Protestants of the South, nonetheless gave the new State its support. Thus, in 1922, "for the first time in its history", The Irish Times was "in agreement with the majority of the population of its country, and confirmed its divorce with the Protestants of Ulster."
Evolved with society
Although the newpaper "continued to be managed by Protestants until the middle of the 1980s", from the 1960s, Mr Mercereau writes, "it is difficult to find in the positions of The Irish Times visible traces of its unionist past". The newspaper evolved with Irish society, becoming "the voice of an urban, resolutely progressive Ireland, embodied by Mary Robinson in the 1990s".
The Irish Times had "gone from one minority to another", but this time, "it seems to be on the point of becoming part of a majority within which the newspaper would feel less and less isolated."
One examiner suggested Mr Mercereau might have a soft spot for this newspaper, and accused him of perhaps being too hard on the Irish Independent and London Times. Yet the doctoral candidate spoke frankly of The Irish Times's current problems.
After investing heavily in the Internet since 1994, like the Financial Times and Le Monde, it was about to charge an annual subscription fee for access to its website. Unless the site improved, Mr Mercereau predicted, he doubted it would be successful. "The Internet is a bottomless pit," Prof Deutsch concurred.
"The Irish Times is living through difficult hours, because of the money invested in the Internet, but not only for that reason," Mr Mercereau continued. "This raises serious questions about the future of the press in Ireland, because if you took away The Irish Times, almost everything else belongs to Independent Newspapers."
Restructuring plan
Mr Mercereau reflected on whether The Irish Times fulfilled accepted definitions of a national newspaper and a newspaper of record. The division of the island and relatively low distribution outside the capital somewhat diminished its national stature, he felt. He cited Le Monde in France and the New York Times and Washington Post as newspapers of record. It was "a difficult label to attribute," Mr Mercereau admitted, but "in the context of the Irish press, it is without contest The Irish Times that comes closest to it."
For three-and-a-half hours, this newspaper's past, present, and future were dissected in that room in the Sorbonne. Mr Mercereau and the audience were dismissed for a few minutes while examiners deliberated. then Prof Jean-Claude Sergeant delivered the verdict: "Mr Mercereau, having heard you, the jury deems you worthy of the title of Doctor in Irish Studies, with highest honours and its congratulations."
There were tears in Ana Luisa Mercereau's eyes when she threw her arms around her husband. In the acknowledgement page of his thesis, the 32-year-old Frenchman promised "to make up to her a hundredfold the hours spent in the company of The Irish Times".