Five French media brand going global
Abstract
This article will provide
the reader a thorough analysis of Digital Mediascape of France with some
prominent and utmost famous online news media websites that have left their
mark on French media. These News media and opinion websites are present only in
arena of Internet and not at other platforms like Print, Television or Radio. I
have particularly selected five such media organisation and these are Brut,
L’internaute, Mediapart, Rue 89 and Atlántico. The article will deal with the
comprehensive study of their ownership, all-inclusive sustainability, organisational
structure, survival techniques, scandalous publications, operations and their
role in overall media scape in France.
BRUT
Brut is a French based
International online media founded on November 16, 2016 by four enthusiasts,
Renaud Le Van Kim , Guillaume Lacroix, Laurent Lucas and Roger coste. It
exclusively produces distributed video contents which mostly focuses on news
and feature-based, short form content. They cover almost all the topics from
politics to technology and social justice, culture and more. All its contents
are Video based and are primarily aimed at young minds and the people who are
too busy in their daily life to read an entire contents of news. “Brut means
"unfiltered," "raw." It's really the idea of bringing
context to the world but not filtering the news.” said Guillaume Lacroix in an
interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
All of its founder have
backgrounds with French TV Industry. Its current CEO and chief-Editor,
Guillaume Lacroix also co-founded infamous French production house Studio Bagel
back in 2013. Its other founders, Renaud Le Van Kim is a French television producer
& Director and Laurent Lucas was a former senior editor for 10 years at Le
Petit Journal.
Back in 2016, Brut was
introduced only on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter with
French subtitles with only 4 members as its core content creators, today it has
almost 60 people working just at its Paris headquarters and more than 150
worldwide. As Brut experienced its growth in number of audience by more than
hundred millions, they expanded their content to other fields as well and onto
different platform like YouTube, Dailymotion, Instagram and snapchat. In 2019
brut launched its own mobile application boost its growth and by this date they
almost produces thousands of video every month. According to a Facebook
statistics 75 percent of its audience is aged 18 to 34 with almost 45 percent
being female audience
Initially, all of its
founder took a ‘financial risk’ by relying on their own funds to launch the
site without any outside investment but as their content grew, so did their
popularity. Later in February next year, a French Public Broadcaster, ‘France Télévisions’, begin broadcasting Brut content both
online and Over-The-Air
Brut has also partnered with some big international brands as well
including Netflix, Airbnb, Ralph Lauren, Nike, BBC News, L’Oréal and many more.
It also played an important role in this field in France due to unavailability
of such platform which had encouraged its founders.
L’Internaute
L’Internaute is a French website
that generates news from different fields of politics, sports, education,
society, cinema, travel and many more. It also offers multiple interactive
services like weather, restaurants, dictionary etc. along with forums for
public interactions where they can ask questions. It also has its own social
network by the name copainsdavant.com. They dispense all these services under
one roof with the help of its parent company, CCM Benchmark Group (Le Figaro
group) that publishes this website. Its current Editor-In-Chief is Alain
Steinman, who relaunched the L’Internaute website in 2011 bringing the company
back on track with profit by 1.6 % gross margin
Started in year 2000 by
the CCM Benchmark Group, this website runs with a motto of ‘L'actualité de vos
passions’, which means ‘The news of your passions’. All of its content and
services are offered free of cost to its customers. It is entirely funded by
advertising on its website.
According to its parent
company website, L’Internaute achieves almost 8.8million view on computer, 11.2
million on mobile, and 3 million view on tablets daily. Its target audience of
almost 6.8 million in numbers ranges specifically from 25-49 years of age. It
contents are produced by around 15 chain managers of about 25 news, 4
slideshows and 5 files per day. It also have achieved more than 160,000
conversations on its forums and around 355,000 socialite on its social media
Mediapart
Mediapart
is an independent French online investigative and opinion journal founded in
year 2008 by the will of four French journalists: François Bonnet, Gérard
Desportes, Laurent Mauduit, Edwy Plenel and two others: Marie-Hélène Smiéjan
and Godefroy Beauvallet. It is published in three different languages: French,
English and Spanish.
All
the four journalist who founded mediapart had been at the post of
Editor-In-Chief at famous French daily newspaper, Le Monde or has acted as
Investigative journalist. The other two founder acted as website, management
and economic model developer. Mediapart as claimed by Edwy plenel strictly
follows the code of ethics and charter, formulated in the program of the
National Council of the Resistance, detailed on November 24, 1945 by the National
Federation of the Press. It has also published several landmark Investigations
including that of Sarkozy-Gaddafi case in which Libyan regime was alleged to
have financed the 2007 French presidential election runner Nicolas Sarkozy with
up to €50 million in pay-outs
Mediapart
does not advertise on its website, thus, no generation of revenue from
advertisement. Its service is based on subscription model where it charges 11£
per month while 110£ for a year. In beginning, its capital investment came from
its six founders and is controlled by them only. They formulated a company
called SAS (Simplified Joint Stock Company) and have invested around 1.3
million euros from their personal contributions. Other investors also showed
its interests and have funded around 1.6 million euros in two different batches
where one batch had single Investor while other was composed of some 40
investors who contributed from five thousand to fifty thousand euros
individually. Some months after the launch of the website, in spring, it
received additional capital increase through same means totalling the amount
raised to be 3.7 million euros. At this moment the distribution of capital in
company was accounted of 60% to its Founders and 40% to its investors
As
of 2014 the co-founder had decided to sell the Mediapart to a non-profit
structure who will be owned by an endowment fund and it was approved by its
employees and shareholders in July 2019 by a voting methodology. With this
approach the capital will be transferred to the non-profit structure which will
prevent any takeover by different private interests
Mediapart
has also launched its whistle-blowers website, French Leaks in 2011, modelled
after Wikileaks, which specialises in sensational leaks of French and International
governments.
Rue
89
Rue
89 is a French news website founded by a group of journalist on 6th
May 2007, on the day of the second round of the French presidential election. It
offers a daily scoop of information on topics such as sports, culture,
politics, business and more. It also launched Eco89 in October 2008, a separate
section especially for economics.
Its
founders, Pierre Haski (current Editor) , Pascal Riché (President), Arnaud
Aubron, Michel Lévy-Provençal, and Laurent Mauriac, all previously has worked
as Chief Editor at some point for Libération except entrepreneur Michel,
working on management part but he left Rue89 following a disagreement with the
strategy of Editorial line. ‘Rue’ in French means ‘street’ and according to its
editor the name Rue89 has been chosen as much as the symbolism of the street as
a place of meeting and discussion. In 2012, the website won the general
excellence award in non-English online journalism. It is now the 10th most
frequented French general news site. In March 2014, Rue89 and the Global
Editors Network launched the first French MOOC about digital journalism.
Its
current source of funding is through subscription method where they charge 69
euros for one year subscription along with Advertising and support fund from
local media. It was bought by Nouvel Observateur group in 2011 that limited its
independency. Its turnover greatly fluctuated, 35 thousand euros in 2017, 61
thousand euros in 2018. It’s economic handling is very fragile. The website
have failed to maintain its grip on the French population like it earlier did.
As of 2019 only 4 active editorial staff was reported to be working and its
whole structure was collapsing. For its continuation the website targeted to
have 1000 subscribers before 31st January 2020
Rue89
website crashed just after six-week of its launch when it published its first
scoop about the failure of Sarkozy's wife, Cécilia, to vote in May in the
second round of the presidential election with more than 600,000 visitors
Rue89
is one of the pioneer of online news provided on internet in France but it
dramatic decreasing popularity and independency have caused mayhem for its
existence, still it manages to run its course under the umbrella of Obs Group.
Atlántico
Atlántico
is a French news website founded in 2011 by journalists Jean-Sébastien Ferjou
and Pierre Guyot and web developers, Loïc Rouvin and Igor Daguier. The website
according to its founders is based on US models of The Huffington Post and The
Daily Beast. Apart from publication of articles on Politics, podcasts and other
sections, it provides daily humour post signed by blogger Hugues Serraf.
Upon
its launch many other news website called atlantico to be of ‘Right ideological
understanding’ which Ferjou rejected saying “Liberalism is not a bad word?”
Atlántico
initially generated its revenue solely by advertising in order to build a
brand, its visibility and its journalistic credibility. During the start-up
days, its investors kept increasing and 51% of its stock of around 1 million euros
was carried by its founders while rest 49% by its group of investors named
‘Free Minds’. Subsequently atlántico opted for subscription based model where
it offers full unlimited access through all of its publications for 120 euros
per year.
In
the month of May 2011, Atlántico began to gather international attention after
it published their scoops on scandals involving IMF head, Dominique
Strauss-kahn. He was arrested on charges of sexual assault in a time when
opposition socialists were planning to put kahn as a presidential candidate
against President Nicolas for 2012 French election
Given the current journalist scenario of France, this website have tried its best to maintain its Economic model along with journalistic code of conduct, still it has a long way to go to make themselves totally sustainable.
Conclusion
Online
news have taken a different discourse now in this fast floating world where one
tends be on move most of the time, making their best for its survivability. In
this race they do wish to catch up with other happenings around them as well,
all at once. Such is the service that they demand. With hand held devices and
fast processors inside them, they expect the content they are receiving to be
of upmost quality in less quantity because time is the key. They want to
understand things as fast as they could in minimum time. The providers who
succeeds to serve such people efficiently makes a mark among the population.
Above has both examples, Organisation who are failing to serve such people and
Organisation who are moving ahead crushing them, leaving a mark. The key is to
evolve itself along with the demand of the generation as they move on the path
of Evolution.
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*THANK YOU*
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