Based: Paris

Founded: 1904

Circulation: 52,800 (2006)

Owner: The French Communist Party owns a 40% stake in the paper; most of the remaining shares are held by staff, readers and "friends" of the paper.

The only major daily to act as the organ of a political party, L'Humanite was founded by Jean Jaures as a socialist paper in 1904, and became the mouthpiece of the French Communist Party in 1920. Banned during World War II, L'Humanite continued to publish clandestinely until just before the Liberation of Paris. Now over 100 years old, it continues to bear the slogan "In an ideal world, L'Humanite would not exist."