The conference room of France's iconic newspaper Libération enjoys a panoramic view of glittering domes and spires. The famous Parisian skyline contrasts with the grimness inside the building these days. Gazing through the room's giant porthole, the paper's foreign editor, François Sergent, sighs. "We could have done better with our readership," he says.

Readers seem to agree. Nearly 33 years after Jean-Paul Sartre and a group of Maoist intellectuals

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) launched their journal in the aftermath of the 1968 Paris riots, Libé — as the left-wing daily paper is dubbed — appears close to death....