Louis-François Bertin

Born in Paris (his father was a former secretary of Étienne François, duc de Choiseul), and considered in retrospect the most important member of the Bertin family, he began his journalistic career by writing for the Journal Français and other papers during the French Revolution.

After Napoleon Bonaparte's 18 Brumaire Coup he acquired the paper with his family name has chiefly been connected, the Journal des débats.

Bertin is credited with the invention of the feuilleton, a supplement to a newspaper's political section, usually in smaller type, that carries gossip, fashion, criticism, epigrams and charades, and fosters a culture of literary gamesmanship.

He returned to Paris in 1805 after the proclamation of the Empire, and resumed management of the paper, the title of which had been changed by order of Napoleon to Journal de l'Empire.

[1] During the full Bourbon Restoration, Bertin directed the Moniteur until 1823, when the Journal des débats became the recognized organ of the liberal-constitutional opposition after he had come to criticize absolutism (a road similar to the one taken by Chateaubriand).