I was just talking to a relative, who lives in France.

[NewDeal_Dem]

24. circulation numbers i've seen were 30,000-45,000. for a paris magazine, it's very small time.

like a literary magazine -- and those are usually subsidized by some rich person.

it published in its initial incarnation 1971-1981, when it had a somewhat different focus (e.g. it was banned by the government for satirizing the death of degaulle, which prompted the name change from L'Hebdo Hara-Kiri to Charlie Hebdo.

The new magazine which started in 1991 has tended to focus on anti-religion and especially anti-islam, and is not above enforcing its political dictats through firing:

In 2000, journalist Mona Chollet was sacked after she had protested against a Philippe Val article which called Palestinians "non-civilized".[8] In 2004, following the death of Gébé, Val succeeded him as director of the publication, while still holding his position as editor.

In 2000 one of their old-time cartoonists was fired by Val for "anti-Semitism".

On 2 July 2008, the designer had published a column in which he criticized the path of Jean Sarkozy. Above all, Sine quip about the possibility of conversion to Judaism of the son of Nicolas Sarkozy before his marriage to the daughter of the founder of the Darty stores. On July 16 , he learned that he was in Charlie Hebdo returned. The publishing director , Philippe Val , justified the end of the collaboration with the argument that about Sine " could be interpreted as making the connection between conversion to Judaism and social success, and it was neither acceptable nor defensible before a court...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo

in comparison, paid circulation for liberation, originally a leftist daily, now a more center left one, is over 100,000. and the big papers/magazines are mostly over 500K circulation.