Jean Schalit

Jean Schalit (1937 – 13 October 2020) was a French journalist. Schalit was born into a Jewish family. His father, Henri Schalit, was a leading editor for L'Information, then ran the magazine Sciences et voyages after World War II. His mother was related to the Offenstadt brothers, who published Bibi Fricotin, Fillette, and Les Pieds Nickelés. Schalit began to work in the press in the early 1960s for the journal Clarté, alongside Serge July, Bernard Kouchner, Jean-François Kahn, and Michel-Antoine Burnier. Schalit helped organize the Union of Communist Students within the French Communist Party (PCF). He was one of the leaders of a committee against the Vietnam War, which led to him being kicked out of the French Communist Party for leading a meeting of other opponents of the Party's elite. In May 1968, the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France, Jeunesse communiste révolutionnaire, and the Movement of 22 March created a newspaper. Schalit worked with his fellow comrades who had been excluded from the PCF to create Action, a militant newspaper first published on 7 May 1968. The newspaper folded in June 1969. After his newspaper folded, Schalit began working for Robert Delpire and as a creative director for McCann. In the early 1980s, he worked alongside Jean-François Bizot to recreate the magazine Actuel, of which he was editor-in-chief for three years. In the years that followed, he took part in multiple unsuccessful press projects, including, Le Monde illustré, Le Grand Paris, and Numéro 1. In 1988, Schalit moved to the United Kingdom with his friends Emile Laugier and Jean Cavé. They began working for The European. There, he met Roger Faligot and Peter Ustinov, who founded the newspaper. In 1990, Schalit returned to France to create the daily newspaper La Truffe. However, the newspaper was a failure, leading him to create Jean Schalit Infographie (JSI), specializing in computer graphics and image production, and was a success. In the early 2000s, Schalit began writing books for children, creating the "Professeur Gamberge – Giboulées" collection with Gallimard Jeunesse.