When the centrist government of Prime Minister Jacques Chirac chose 69-year-old Robert Hersant to buy the newspaper "France-Soir" (famous for its ties to the resistance to the Nazis) in 1976, journalists at many newspapers on the left fought the political move by reminding both the public and the government of Hersant's collaboration during the German occupation of France and of the unfulfilled liberation press law. Hersant considers his collaboration to be a passage of youth. Hersant's political and publishing successes and the fact that the collaboration charge was 30 years old muted the issue for the reading public. Newspapers were struggling in 1976--they were losing readers in increasing numbers and had little money to invest in new print technology. Hersant represented a past they could not condone and a future (reducing personnel, investing in modern centralized printing facilities, and organizing central editorial bureaus) that concerned them. Hersant's purchase of two Paris newspapers in 1976 marked a turning point. Hersant, at one time stripped of his right to vote because he collaborated with the Nazis, had by 1976 become an important member of France's conservative political forces and one of its most influential citizens. (Thirty-six notes are included and three illustrations are attached.) (RS)