International newspapers/orgs of record in French or Spanish?

March 18, 2025 2:48 AM

Yet more on replacing the Washington Post and NYT... I'm following French news on bluesky even though I barely speak the language. Looking for more of that sort of thing. It helps. Spanish too.

Headlines I translate immediately are not in the interest of my mental health. Slowing things down is just fine.

I can parse French just enough to get the gist of headlines and can dive deeper if I want (or just translate the page or click the English edition) but I'm following Le Monde and the slower pace of translation is helping me with the daily effort to not go completely crazy.

I know Spanish a good deal better.

So. What are international French and Spanish language newspapers of record in countries/cities that speak those languages?

I'm looking for "newspaper of record" type sources along the lines of NYT and WaPo before they became whatever it is they are now.

I follow Le Monde currently but it's hard for me to vet world wide sources to avoid Fox News equivalents. Barcelona? French-speaking African nations? Is there a great newspaper in Mexico?

I'm also interested in any truly great left-wing type sources in those languages.

All of this is dependent on me getting the curation down because I don't want a firehose, so I'm looking for what folks who know more than me think are solid sources or interesting ones. (They don't have to be perfect, every news source has something to criticize.)

posted by A Terrible Llama to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

Liberátion and l’Humanité are French newspapers that are left of Le Monde (in the latter case it’s very left of Le Monde).

Radio France International and France 24 are state broadcasters, a bit like the BBC World Service, but with a francophone focus.
posted by Kattullus at 4:05 AM on March 18 [3 favorites]

Belgian francophone press: Le Soir, La Libre Belgique. Both centrist, with the former being more progressive than the latter.

The news arm of the Belgian francophone state broadcaster is RTBF Info.
posted by pendrift at 4:41 AM on March 18

I should branch out a bit from only France and Spain (looking forward to reading more answers) but anyhow:

I enjoy franceinfo which is a TV channel / website written in a fairly simple style. (I find the writing style of Le Monde for example to be a bit heavygoing). I also read Libération as Kattullus mentioned, though it is paywalled.

For Spanish news, I tend to read El Pais (I find it much better than the other Spain-based papers). I also watch the daily 10-minute round-up from Spanish national broadcaster RTVE on YouTube. I also tend to check elDiario.es which is an independent news site also based in Spain.
posted by sefsl at 6:30 AM on March 18

I'm here to second El País!

Although it's a Spain-based paper, it also has various digital editions for the Americas (Mexico / Colombia / Chile / Argentina / US Spanish and US English) -- it's the same basic publication but will prioritize stories differently, e.g. the Spain edition will headline stories about Spanish politics, while those will be obviously de-prioritized for the US edition.
posted by andrewesque at 7:24 AM on March 18

For Canada:

Radio-Canada (the French-language arm of the CBC)

La Presse
posted by mekily at 10:04 AM on March 18 [1 favorite]

You've already gotten some solid recommendations. Regarding France 24 (as suggested by Kattullus), it may interest you to know that in addition to offering written articles, their news broadcasts are available on continuous loop via Youtube. (They typically last 20 minutes or so, then repeat.)

France-Amérique might feasibly interest you as well. They offer articles in both French and English.
posted by DavidfromBA at 7:10 PM on March 20

Response by poster: Thanks everyone. I added a bunch.

I have Radio France and France Inter apps on my own, and Le Monde has a daily podcast I listen to also. We listen to FIP all day at home (which was a Metafilter find) and it's all music but it's the best radio station in the world as far as I know...you're listening to the Violent Femmes and then French pop stars and then some stunningly filthy rap music and then opera comes on. It's like a dream come true for those of us who like things eclectic and random.)

Thanks for all of these, it is a real comfort. I follow English language news from papers in Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Australia. I should probably add others but will eventually need to vet.

I'm going to take a tip from a 'how are you surviving this?" Ask I read about a month ago and split my Bluesky account into news versus not news because I want to be aware, don't want to descend into overstimulated dysregulation, need much better boundaries about what is allowed into my brain.

And also like I said, my iffy grasp of these languages slows me down and allows me a minute to get my bearings and see if I have the capacity to dig further into whatever hair on fire thing I've just learned.

Also, it's nice to see other countries being other countries and living their lives and reality, because being in the US is grueling and overwhelming right now.

Crocuses are up, though.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 3:38 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Wanted to add I'm still interested in Spanish sources from Central America and Mexico or any other Spanish-speaking nation with a reasonably reliable news source if anyone wants to weigh in.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 3:44 AM on March 21