| Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber | |
| Birth Date: | 31 October 1937 |
| Birth Place: | Boulogne-Billancourt, France |
| Death Place: | Neuilly-sur-Seine, France |
| Education: | Lycée Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague |
| Alma Mater: | Sciences Po |
| Occupation: | Journalist |
| Spouse: |
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| Children: | 4 |
| Parents: | Émile Servan-Schreiber Denise Bresard |
Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber (in French pronounced as /ʒɑ̃ lwi sɛʁvɑ̃ ʃʁɛbɛʁ/;[1] 31 October 193728 November 2020) was a French journalist. He was the co-founder of L'Expansion and the founder of Psychologies and Radio Classique. He was the author of several books.
Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber was born on 31 October 1937, in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. His father, Émile Servan-Schreiber, was a French journalist of Jewish-Prussian descent. His mother was Denise Bresard. The Servan-Schreibers (up to 200 members) have a family reunion every five years.[2]
As a child Servan-Schreiber aspired to become a psychoanalyst but, being born into a family of journalists went into that profession. He graduated from Sciences Po in 1960.[3]
Servan-Schreiber was a journalist.[4] [5] He first wrote for Echos, which had been co-founded by his father, followed by L'Express which had been founded by his brother Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber.[3] [6] Having experience of reading American news magazines from a period spent teaching at Stanford University Servan-Schreiber worked with his brother to transform L'Express into a similar publication, the first of its kind in France.[6]
Servan-Schreiber went on to found his own press company, L'Expansion, in 1967 with Jean Boissonnat. He co-founded the magazine L'Expansion with Boissonnat in 1967 and Lire with Bernard Pivot in 1975.[3] [6] Servan-Schreiber would remain a director of L'Expansion for 27 years, and expand it to several foreign editions. He founded Radio Classique in 1982.[3] He was the owner of La Vie Éco, a Moroccan newspaper, from 1994 to 1997, having acquired a special exemption from that nation's foreign ownership rules via Moroccan prime minister Abdellatif Filali.[3] [7] Servan-Schreiber took over Psychologies in 1997, and sold it to the Lagardère Group in 2008 having increased its circulation from 75,000 to 350,000 to become the second best-selling women's monthly in France.[6] [3] He founded another magazine, Clés, in 2010.[3] At times the L'Expansion group also ran La Vie Financière, La Lettre de L’Expansion and La Tribune.[6]
During the 1970s Servan-Schreiber appeared frequently on the TF1 programme Questionnaire.[6] Servan-Schreiber was the author of several books and around twenty essays.[3] [6] He served as the chairman of the French chapter of Human Rights Watch since 2007.[3] Servan-Schreiber was known by the initials JLSS.[8]
Servan-Schreiber was married twice. He married his first wife, Claude Sadoc, in 1957. They had four children; she is now married to a woman, former politician Françoise Gaspard.[9] In 1987, he married his second wife, Perla.[3]
He died from COVID-19 on 28 November 2020, at the age of 83.[10]