In France, Rue89 brings readers into the newsroom

An editorial conference Thursday at Rue89, a French news Web site. Real-time blogs of the meetings invite readers to contribute.(Thomas White/Reuters)


By James Mackenzie

PARIS: In a grimy part of eastern Paris a morning editorial conference is under way, similar to the planning meetings that occur in newsrooms around the world. Except this one is being blogged live and readers can join in.

The meeting is at Rue89, a news Web site created in 2007 by former journalists of the newspaper Libération. It is one of several interactive sites to have appeared as a global crisis in the print media squeezes French newspapers.

"There's someone saying that we don't have an international topic," says the journalist tracking reader comments on a laptop.

"What do they say? Do they have anything to suggest?" asks Pascal Riche, the editor in chief.

In the end, the reader's suggestion about a story on Afghanistan is rejected, but Riche said he believed that such interaction between journalists and readers demonstrated a possible version of the future for the global news media as it responds to the challenges of the Internet.

Rue89 uses the slogan "Information with three voices. Journalists, experts, Internautes," to describe a strategy of mixing its own journalism with commentary from outside specialists and the contributions of Internet users.
While some tech-savvy consumers may already have abandoned established print and television news in favor of collective information playgrounds like Wikipedia or Twitter, Riche said he saw clear limits to "crowdsourcing" of news.

"The idea you sometimes hear that everyone wants to be a journalist is completely idiotic," he said. "People don't want to be ringing up police headquarters to check out some fact. But at the same time, they don't want journalism delivered from on high either."

A tiny startup compared with the big French dailies like Libération, Le Figaro or Le Monde, Rue89 has no paper, printing or distribution to pay for. It has nonetheless had some noteworthy scoops.

It broke the news that President Nicolas Sarkozy's previous wife had not voted for him in the 2007 election - they divorced a few months later, and Sarkozy has since married Carla Bruni. It also reported unrest that has hit the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe well before most of the mainland press.

With a handful of journalists and no major investor to provide financial backing, Rue89 tries to make a virtue out of necessity, reacting quickly and staying much closer to its readership than big papers can.

The economic slump has intensified the scramble for advertising revenue, and the big names are fighting back online by building up their Web presence.

In effect, newspapers and broadcasters have been required to follow advertisers online, where advertising is less expensive by a factor of about 10, where it is easier to target specific audiences and where effectiveness can be more accurately measured.

"I think that the development of the Internet is extremely positive for us," said Francis Morel, editor-in-chief of Le Figaro, a conservative daily. "It reinforces the weight of Le Figaro, it strengthens the links with our readers and it brings in extra revenues."

With some exceptions, sales of French newspapers have fallen steadily according to OJD, the organization that monitors media circulation in France. Le Figaro's circulation last year averaged around 340,000, about 9,000 fewer than in 2004; Le Monde saw a sharper drop of over 40,000, to 340,000.

At the same time, their online readership has boomed. Lemonde.fr had nearly 48 million visits in January, while Lefigaro.fr attracted more than 23 million, according to the OJD, which placed both titles in the top 10 among general-interest sites, alongside L'Équipe and Pagesjaunes.fr, a telephone directory.

The shift of readers to the Web has been similar throughout the Continent, and in some ways even more significant. The German papers Bild and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Corriere della Sera in Italy, El País in Spain and The Guardian and The Times in Britain have all see a gentle decline in sales but booming page views online.

In the United States, regional newspapers have been falling like dominos, but some big names have carved out dominant positions online that have spread their influence well beyond their traditional readers.

Nonetheless, a big question remains unanswered for everyone in the industry: how to generate the returns newspapers used to make from people handing over coins at newsstands, particularly when ad budgets are shrinking.

"There is a problem making money from the Internet, there's no doubt about that," Morel said.