Podcast — Manon Boquen, “Pays”: Understanding the Concept of Community (6/6)

Margaux Vulliet: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Médianes podcast, which sits down with media founders so they can share their experiences with you. I’m Margaux Vulliet, a journalist at Médianes, and you’re listening to *Chemins*. From feature stories to photography and profiles, the Pays team has made it their mission to portray the region as authentically as possible. Pays is, above all, a beautiful publication that you keep, flip through, and share—one that explores a different region with each issue, which also means different readers each time. So how do you build a community when you launch a publication, how do you maintain it, and how do you manage the unique nature of a publication like *Pays*? We’re discussing this with Manon Boquen. Hello, Manon.

Manon Boquen: Hello, Margaux.

Margaux Vulliet : Alors, tu es la cofondatrice de Pays et journaliste pigiste. Tu bosses pour des médias, pour des rédactions comme M le Mag, La Vie ou encore Télérama. J’ai envie de te poser une question un petit peu précise, quel est ton dernier bon souvenir que tu as en lien avec ton média Pays, que ce soit un moment ou encore une rencontre ?

Manon Boquen: That’s perfect timing, because actually last night we were at a presentation at a bookstore called La Maronite in the Belleville neighborhood. And it was really nice because it was a meet-and-greet with the readers of *Pays*. So they were able to ask all their questions. It was a friendly gathering, and it meant even more because this bookstore is actually at risk of closing—it’s struggling to survive in today’s somewhat complex media landscape. We were also there to promote the bookstore, so the atmosphere was both friendly and focused on sharing the project. After working on it for six months, of course, it felt great.

Margaux Vulliet: Yes, well, we’ll get back to that, but I’d like to go back a little bit. With the Pays project, you’re not alone—there are four of you. During the first lockdown, some—I’d say—were baking bread, doing various things, cooking, while others were launching their own media outlets. Just like you guys did with *Pays*. Why did you decide to launch this particular media outlet?

Manon Boquen: *Pays* was an idea I had in mind… Well, let’s just say it wasn’t quite as specific as it was at the beginning, but it was a little something that kept popping into my head. Actually, as a freelance journalist, I was working with national media outlets. I often went out to cover stories in the regions—outside of Paris, in particular—and I actually had the impression, the feeling, that there were topics we needed to explore in more depth but didn’t have the time for. But that’s normal; it’s also due to the nature of the media landscape. So there was a bit of that idea, and another experience as well, since I’ve been working for quite some time now during the summer at *Le Pays Malouin*, the local weekly newspaper for the Saint-Malo region. And actually, it was the same there—I’d come across interesting topics related to tourism and the silting up of the Rance, which is a river near Saint-Malo. Anyway, there were plenty of topics like that—very important ones—but since we were a weekly, we didn’t have time to write the articles. We’re a very small team, so it was a bit frustrating.

Margaux Vulliet: Frustration? I was going to ask you—was it partly a reaction to what the local or national media are doing wrong or failing to do? But was it frustration?

Manon Boquen: Yes, well, we shouldn’t lump everyone together, and besides, there are lots of great things happening in both local and national media, so that wasn’t the goal—but yes, it was frustration, though something quite personal, actually. It was just an idea floating around in my head—I thought maybe one day I’d start a media outlet, we’ll see… and besides, there’s another equally important aspect to *Pays*: photography. I’ve been lucky enough to work with photographers on several projects, so there was also that ambition—to create a really beautiful magazine that combines photography with collaborative work. Specifically, one that features both male and female writers and photographers. So that was kind of the dream, and in a way, the lockdown made that dream come true since I ended up with three friends, as you mentioned. Three people with skills different from mine, and we complement each other really well. So there you go—it was the right moment; we had a little time on our hands, and while we didn’t have much of a future outlook, at the same time we had a lot going on because of the circumstances—and that’s how Pays came about.

Margaux Vulliet: So maybe you could quickly tell us who the other three people are who are with you?

Manon Boquen: Of course. So, along with me, there’s also Baptiste Thevelein, who works at Médianes and specializes in all aspects of marketing, sales, and communications for *Pays*. There’s Christelle Perrin, also at Médianes, who’s a graphic designer. She’s the art director for Pays, and there’s Benoît Michaelis, who’s a photographer. He also serves as the photo editor for Pays.

Margaux Vulliet: You were just mentioning what can be found in *Pays*: collaborations between journalists and photographers. For someone who isn’t familiar with *Pays*, what’s the quickest way to describe it?

Manon Boquen: *Pays* is a biannual magazine. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a print publication, 168 pages; and the idea is to focus on one region per issue. The idea behind this is to feature profiles, reports, and in-depth stories about that region to paint a picture—shall we say, a comprehensive one? No, because that’s not possible, but at least as accurate as possible, so we discuss both the challenges that may exist in that region and the initiatives taking place there. One of our goals—since we’re a magazine that’s both local and aims to have a national reach—is to cover topics that might be of interest to a wider audience. Even if you’re not from Saint-Malo, for example, you can read about tourism; if you live in Biarritz, the issues are pretty much the same—and in fact, you see it when you read the news: “Hey, this could apply to me too,” so that’s kind of the goal—to have this local scope and this national scope, and to try to make the two work together and engage in dialogue.”

“The idea (…) is to create portraits, feature stories, and investigative reports in this region to paint a picture—shall we say, an exhaustive one? No, because that’s not possible, but in any case as accurate as possible—so to address both the issues that may exist in this region and the initiatives taking place there.”

Margaux Vulliet: You were saying just a moment ago: “Maybe one day I’ll start my own media outlet,” and so on. Is that an idea you’ve always had?

Manon Boquen: Not right from the start, because first of all, you have to establish yourself as a journalist, so it’s complicated. And then there’s also the issue of having self-confidence, which isn’t easy. So no, it came little by little; it was really experience that made me realize that, and I saw people around me—especially friends like Baptiste—who were working in the media and at new media outlets, and that also gave me the feeling that maybe it really is possible, because we’re told so often that the press “is complicated, you can’t make a living from it, it’s unstable”—which immediately shatters a lot of dreams before they’ve even been born. But having people around me who are interested in this world, and seeing that others have made things happen—well, that motivates me.

Margaux Vulliet: Yes, exactly—that’s something that can be intimidating right from the start. You’re first and foremost a journalist: what’s it really like to have to run a media company and manage a team when, as a journalist, you aren’t necessarily trained for that? How did you approach it?

Manon Boquen: Of course, I was a little nervous, as you said, because it’s not something I do every day. Actually, usually I’m in the same position as the people I work with—I’m the one who pitches stories to editorial teams, who reaches out to them, who tries to motivate people—but in this case, it’s the people who are coming to me, so just in terms of the approach and mindset, it’s completely different. So you have to embrace that, and it’s not easy—it’s a daily struggle. I wouldn’t say I’ve fully embraced it yet, but I’m trying. And then, what was important to me—I don’t know how to do everything, and of course you’re always learning over time—I tried to apply, let’s say, my experience as a freelancer, to make it work for the people I’m actually working with, so I’d tell myself, for example: well, paying people is a hassle, but yes, it’s important. 

Margaux Vulliet: And sometimes the press can forget that.

Manon Boquen: That’s right—there are a lot of media outlets that sometimes forget or are slow to respond, and so on. And yet behind the scenes—and I’m in this situation myself—there are real people who need to pay their rent at the end of the month, so I try to put into practice a little bit of what I’d like to see applied to me as a freelancer. These are just attempts—sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. And that’s it—we’re learning as we go.

Margaux Vulliet: Yeah, but you haven't given up your work as a freelance journalist—how do you manage to balance your time between your freelance gigs and the Pays project?

Manon Boquen: It really varies a lot, actually, because it’s true that with *Pays*—since it’s a biannual magazine—there are busy periods, especially during the deadline crunch, which can be tough. At those times, I spend a lot of time on *Pays*. But I’m aware of that, and in fact, for the first issue, I even warned my editors and editors-in-chief, telling them, “Okay, well, for the next few weeks, I won’t be available because I’m actually working on another project.” And often, people take it well and accept it, so that’s that on that front, and now I’m trying to organize my time a bit on a day-to-day basis. I’m not a pro at organization—at least I don’t have a well-defined schedule, even just in my own work—so that alone makes it a bit complicated, but let’s just say I’m trying, let’s say one day a week, to work on *Pays*, to keep a little bit of an eye on everything all the time—all that without neglecting the rest—but it’s a rhythm that’s not easy to get into. And sometimes, I might be working a little too much.

Margaux Vulliet: And why did you decide to publish a magazine that comes out twice a year? Was it specifically because of the schedule, or was that not the reason at all?

Manon Boquen: The calendar is part of it, and then there are quite a few other things as well, since we want *Pays* to be a long-form magazine. We publish long-form pieces—what are often called “cold” reports—so, you see, it’s not breaking news, which means we want to take our time and let the journalists take their time developing the stories as well. So first of all, every six months is a good pace, and then on the other hand, we’re a founding team—there are four of us—and for now we all have our own side jobs. So we didn’t want to set all that aside and devote ourselves solely to Pays because we’re also happy with what we’re doing on the side. So it was a bit of a mix of all that.

"We want *Pays* to be a magazine with a long-term perspective."

Margaux Vulliet: And has serving as editor-in-chief given you a different perspective on the journalism profession?

Manon Boquen: Yes, of course—just being the person who does the final proofreading of all the texts and having that responsibility, in fact, since usually, I submit my articles, they’re proofread by someone else, and then there’s an editing department that proofreads them again; so there are a lot of other responsibilities involved, and in this case, I’m one of the last people to proofread, so this issue of responsibility is very important. And I try to take that into account as well and tell myself, yes, that’s it—when you’re an editor-in-chief, there are all these complex issues to deal with. And that also makes us think about the direction we set, because at Pays, we try to give the journalists who work with us a fair amount of freedom—whether in terms of style, approach, or even the photos. We’re open to all kinds of suggestions and ideas. But despite all that, you still need to have a direction, so we try to steer things a little bit—and that’s something you learn. I think it’s different perspectives on the practice that I’ve developed—ones I didn’t have myself before.

Margaux Vulliet: As I mentioned in the introduction, these are journalists and freelancers—some of whom are experts on the specific region covered—who actually suggest topics for each issue. For the latest issue, on Belleville, a neighborhood in Paris, you received a lot of suggestions. How did you go about narrowing down the various topics you received?

Manon Boquen: It’s never easy, honestly—it breaks your heart sometimes. But the way we work at *Pays* is that the editorial meetings to discuss topics involve all four of us, so everyone has a say. Christelle, Baptiste, Benoît, and me. And we give our opinions on the topics. So that’s how it went. It’s true that for the Belleville issue, we received over a hundred proposals, but in the end, we only selected about twenty topics, so we had to make some choices. We do have some broad ideas, though, about the areas we’re going to cover—themes that seem important to us. In any case, there are issues we tell ourselves we can’t ignore—for example, for the Belleville issue, the issues of gentrification, housing, and social and cultural diversity are very important, so we were also looking for proposals that reflected these concerns. But we also like to be surprised, and sometimes we’ve seen, for example, a proposal for a story about the crows of Belleville—the birds, to be clear—and someone who had been observing a flock of crows living in Belleville. When we received the proposal, it immediately caught my attention. I thought, “Ah, there it is—we absolutely have to have this story; it’s super original, and I don’t know if we’ll find anything like it elsewhere,” and then, well, we discuss it among ourselves. Sometimes we’re more or less in agreement; we try to reach a consensus, and the photographic aspect is also important for stories where we think a lot about, “By the way, is this going to be easy to photograph or not? ” “How do we go about it?”, and so on. And sometimes it’s difficult. For this issue of *Belleville*, for example, we have a story on Chinese sex workers in Belleville. It’s a very difficult subject to photograph. We have to take all of that into account as well, and unfortunately, space is limited.

Margaux Vulliet: As a journalist, we often ask ourselves about legitimacy—how did you earn that legitimacy? In any case, when it comes to entering the print magazine market? How do you see yourself in relation to that? By saying, “I have the right to start my own media outlet; I have the right to do something I enjoy and that excites me”? 

Manon Boquen: First of all, you have to stay humble—it’s always hard to feel like you belong. But anyway, we try our best, and I do think it also comes down to the feedback we get from people. If no one had been interested, maybe we would have told ourselves, “Well, in the end, we don’t really have a place in this market or in print magazines.” And then the first issue did really well. In fact, we printed 1,500 copies, and they sold out quickly. So then we thought, “Maybe people are interested, and maybe we have some legitimacy in all this”—so for me, it’s really the feedback from our readers that gives us legitimacy. Of course, when fellow journalists also write about us, it’s all the more gratifying. We tell ourselves, “Well, if they appreciate the work, it means we’ve done something right,” so it’s a combination of all that—but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I feel 100% legitimate; that’s not the case.

Margaux Vulliet: Not yet?

Manon Boquen: No, well, I don’t know if we’ll ever get there or not. Then again, I’m not sure how much of this is due to imposter syndrome. But I try to feel like I belong—it takes work, though; it’s not easy.

Margaux Vulliet: Yeah, and especially with *Pays*, what sets it apart is that each issue focuses on a different region—and you were just talking about the readers. It’s possible that each issue attracts a different readership because some people will buy the magazine because it covers a region that’s relevant to them, for example, or that interests them. First of all, why did you choose to focus on a different geographic area each time?

Manon Boquen: I was also quite convinced, based on my experience as a journalist, that at the local level—for example, in a neighborhood or a city—it’s actually very small. But there are powerful social issues that emerge and are very important, and through this lens, we can address them perhaps more easily than if we were to say, “In France, this or that is happening”—those big global phenomena that are difficult to tackle when you’re zoomed in on the local level. It allows us to discuss them more accurately and to focus on issues that truly affect the people living in that area. So that was important, and I forgot your last question. I’m sorry…

Margaux Vulliet: I was just about to shift the conversation to readers. The readership is different every time; how do we ensure that we’ll have as many readers as we did for the previous issue—which did well—or, more specifically, how do we guarantee sales every time?

Manon Boquen: Well, honestly, it’s difficult—it’s not an exact science at all—because you can imagine, for example, that an issue about the Belleville neighborhood would be much more popular than one about the Vercors, simply because there are so many more residents there, and so on. But we learn as we go, and we give it a try. In fact, these topics are experiments, and we don’t necessarily know if they’ll work or not. Then there are the campaigns, because we organize crowdfunding campaigns before each issue comes out to finance them; that gives us a little insight into, well, is this something people are interested in, will it maybe sell? But it’s also very different—the campaign and the dynamics of a campaign in a bookstore—so all of that comes into play, and it’s hard to gauge. So sometimes we form certain expectations, and in the end, that’s not what happens. So it’s actually pretty hard to say, and unfortunately, I don’t have an exact science for knowing which markets will work and which won’t.

Margaux Vulliet: And for the first issue—when you just show up like that with a new media outlet—how did you manage to get your name out there and build an initial community around *Pays*?

Manon Boquen: So actually, we set things in motion before that—we released a manifesto, which must have been in April 2020 if I’m not mistaken—to talk a little bit about what we’d like Pays to be and what our ideals are. And it got shared quite a bit. We shared it on social media and so on. We got a good response, so that made us think, “Well, hey, maybe people are interested—that’s cool,” and then we put together a newsletter to talk a little bit about what we wanted to do—for example, what will *Pays* look like? So Christelle explained a bit about the graphic design guidelines. So, we want it to be a print magazine, in a square format, with a cover on the front; as for the editorial content, we want to feature in-depth articles that give journalists time and space to work, so we fleshed out the project a bit and, in a way, we tried to create something—and maybe in the process, we sparked some excitement too—which ultimately led to our first crowdfunding campaign in September. So by then we’d actually already built a community around us—a few hundred people who were following us pretty closely. And when we launched the campaign, they were enthusiastic; they participated. So we already had that foundation, and then, on the local level—and the fact that we had this local angle— that helped a lot too—especially our fellow journalists at regional daily and weekly newspapers. They’d heard about our project, so we were interviewed, and that created simple word-of-mouth that works really well in areas like that.

Margaux Vulliet: Well, actually, the audience you’re addressing often consists of people who know the area well. It’s a bit of a challenge every time to think, “Whoever is reading this is going to be very discerning and very picky about what they read.” How do you approach that challenge?

Manon Boquen: Yes, it’s clearly a challenge, because we don’t want them to read the same thing every morning in *Ouest France*, for example, so we try either to develop stories that the local press doesn’t have time to cover for one reason or another—particularly due to time constraints— or to cover topics that might not be addressed due to editorial fears or reluctance to tackle investigative stories. In our first issue, we didn’t hesitate to cover the Timac plant—a nitrogen fertilizer factory located right across from the ramparts of Saint-Malo— which is a very taboo subject locally—truly, everyone we spoke to about it told us, “But why are you doing this? You’re going to get in trouble,” and so on. There were fears—well, they were actually irrational. Because this plant, I should point out, is still the largest employer in Saint-Malo, so there are a lot of people who work there. And there are also a lot of conflicts of interest at play, so we’re trying to navigate that. Well, we’re here in this area, and we’re only here this one time, so maybe we have more leeway than a local journalist who’s there every day—and who, in fact, runs into people every day and might face pretty intense pressure. Well, we have that advantage of being here just once and being able to cover topics in one go and talk about things that can’t be discussed in the mainstream press.

Margaux Vulliet: So, the goal is to make room for topics that we wouldn't see anywhere else?

Manon Boquen: Yeah, that's right.

Margaux Vulliet: You travel to these regions every time, meet with readers, and host book launch events in the regions you cover. You were telling me earlier about how important reader feedback is because, for you, it also helps you improve by understanding what they’re looking for. What themes often come up in these conversations? I imagine they’re different every time, but broadly speaking, in the conversations you or the team have had with readers across the three different regions, are there certain things that consistently come up?

Manon Boquen: There’s a lot of curiosity about the model—how we operate, how we choose the regions. It’s a question that comes up all the time, and that’s only natural…

Margaux Vulliet: Perhaps you should explain it as you do, because, once again, the readers are at the heart of the magazine.

Manon Boquen: That’s right—it was important to us, too, to get them involved in one way or another. We’re not an online media outlet where there’s a lot of interactivity with our readers. So we figured we had to get them involved—it would actually be great if they helped us choose the regions we visit each time—so we preselect different regions, usually with a broad concept in mind. For example, we covered Saint-Malo, and then we decided we’d rather not cover a very touristy coastal area because, well, we’d risk covering themes that are a bit similar. As I mentioned earlier, Saint-Malo and Biarritz, for example, and the Basque Coast—they’re very similar in some ways—so we’ll skip those for now. So we suggested some completely different options, including the Vercors, and it’s actually a vote. Then, the subscribers of *Pays* vote for the region they prefer, so that’s what led us to the Vercors and then to Belleville. And there, too, our goal was really to go to a city—an urban area—to show that we weren’t just a regional magazine or, to put it pejoratively, a “provincial” one. So that wasn’t what we wanted to do at all, and we’re going to feature lots of different regions facing different challenges, but ultimately, when you put them all together—it’s like a puzzle, really—it gives a comprehensive picture of the region and the country, the whole country.

Margaux Vulliet: What stood out from these conversations? But above all, here’s a somewhat related question: why is it important to connect with our readers?

Manon Boquen: So what comes out of these conversations is, as I was saying, curiosity about the choice of regions and how the editorial team works. Because we try to be really transparent about the fact that we don’t go there ourselves every time—we don’t pack up a trailer and head to a region every six months—we also make room for local journalists who know the area well to speak up and cover these stories. And then what’s funny is that people often say to us, “Oh, but you didn’t cover that?” Well, yes—obviously, since we’re a print magazine, we just don’t have the space for it. So of course, it’s a shame—we’re sad about it, too—but it sparks a lot of discussion and dialogue, actually, around the topics we cover and the state of the press in general. And that’s interesting, overall, in the media world—I mean, things have changed today, but there was a time when newsrooms were very opaque, and no one explained how things worked, and in fact, maybe that’s still somewhat true today. And that also gives rise to a lot of misconceptions about the profession, sometimes even leading to conspiracy theories. I mean, what’s really going on in those newsrooms? People in power rubbing shoulders with other people in power, and so on. Transparency allows us to explain how things actually work. And that’s it—to say that we’re not here to talk about conspiracies, whatever they may be, or to bring up things like that, but rather to explain our work, how it works, what a newsroom is like, and what it means to be a journalist. And that, I think, is more important to me—having that kind of transparency.

Margaux Vulliet: And do readers appreciate that kind of transparency, or is it complicated?

Manon Boquen: No, they’re sensitive—and I actually think everyone is, because no matter what people say, the job of a journalist is just like any other job, like being a police officer, and so on. People immediately have a certain image in mind when they think of these professions. “Oh, I think that’s what that job is like,” but in reality, it rarely matches the image people have of it, so I think it’s important to demystify and actually explain what the job is really like in practice, and yeah, it helps avoid misconceptions and prevents people from building up this whole fantasy world around the journalism profession and the power we have.

Margaux Vulliet: And it also takes time to reach out to people, organize these meetings, and host these launch parties. How do you plan these launch parties? The idea is to present the magazine; there are also freelance journalists who’ve worked on the magazine in attendance, and a different team each time—how do you go about creating that editorial room vibe, even if it’s just for a single issue of a single magazine?

Manon Boquen: That’s the challenge compared to working in a traditional newsroom. Unfortunately, for the first two issues, we were a bit hampered by the COVID situation, so we had a hard time organizing meetings even just with the freelancers. But for Issue 3, we held a meeting just with the freelancers from Belleville magazine, and we all got together so they could get a sneak peek at their issue while we were at it, and also to chat—because it’s true that these days, when you’re a freelancer, communication take place via email or phone, and we don’t actually know each other in person, so this is already an opportunity to see each other and build a little bit of momentum, because the freelancers are also our ambassadors in the community. They know the area; they’ve met lots of people for their articles, so they talk about us, and that alone serves as an initial gateway to the magazine. And then, we also do a lot of work with bookstores since we’re distributed through our website or in bookstores. And for us, it’s important to visit bookstores, to take this local approach, and to support local businesses as well. So we try to plan itineraries centered around these bookstores to meet people—that’s what we did in the Vercors, for example, where we visited three different towns in the Vercors and met lots of different people in very different settings, by the way. Sometimes the atmosphere was more festive, sometimes more like a debate, but everything is a good opportunity to talk about the region, as long as there are places where we can meet the local people and others who don’t even know us. That’s what matters most.

Margaux Vulliet: Yeah, you wanted to pack into *Pays* pretty much everything that frustrated you about the mainstream press; have the model and the way you do things evolved between the first and last issues? In terms of how you approach topics, how you work with freelance journalists? And what about your relationship with readers—have there been any changes there?

Manon Boquen: A certain rhythm is already taking shape because, after all, it was all brand-new the first time around. So naturally, that’s part of it, and the team actually keeps growing with each issue. Well, that’s how it’s been so far—it’s grown a lot, since for the Saint-Malo issue, Benoît and I covered a lot of stories, so I was both the supervisor for some of them and my own boss, so there was that aspect to it. And then for the Belleville issue, there were 40 people to manage—let’s say—even though I don’t really like that word—or rather, to guide, and so yes, that does, in fact, require a system to set up and follow-up on the stories, etc. I try to be as present as possible, to respond as much as I can, and to improve in that area too—it’s not the easiest thing, and I also try to give constructive feedback, because I’ve experienced this myself—maybe it’s a source of frustration—that sometimes people just say, “Okay, here’s the article,” and you don’t really know. “Well, what’s good about it? What did you like?” or, conversely, “Oh, well, that’s no good,” but without any further explanation. I like to tell people, “This part’s good; that part’s not so good.” Why? For this reason and that reason—because we need to improve—and for me, just reading other people’s work is also great; as a journalist, it’s incredibly inspiring to read others’ work and see their writing style, to see how they approach topics. Well, that’s actually the very source of inspiration for me, so I use it in my own writing as well.

Margaux Vulliet: Right, so what does Pays offer you during the time you’re working as a freelance journalist?

Manon Boquen: Even more curiosity—I was already trying to be very curious—and then the mechanics of writing, writing fluidly, and knowing how to adapt to the word count requirements as well… I get it—it’s true that when you’re a freelancer, it’s a pain; sometimes you don’t have many characters, and at the same time, when you’re on the other side, you think, “Oh, but this isn’t going to fit there, is it? They gave me 5,000 more characters—that’s not going to be possible.” So all of that can be learned, too. And now I’m trying to be just as thorough on that front, too. And well, “thoroughness” is yet another word I’d use to describe my personal approach—to keep doing my job to the best of my ability and to provide information. In any case, I want it to be flawless; let’s say that when you read *Pays*, there’s nothing to criticize, but then again, that’s the same thing—it’s something we strive for, but it’s always difficult to achieve perfection.

Margaux Vulliet: To come back to the community aspect for a moment, the word “connection” comes up often when you talk about Pays. How are you trying to create—or perhaps even recreate, as we were just discussing—the connection that has been somewhat lost between the press and readers?

Manon Boquen: It comes down to meeting people, as we were saying. And then the fact of having this local roots—I think it creates a connection just by taking an interest in certain topics, by going out to meet people who don’t usually have a voice, because the media ecosystem… most newsrooms are in Paris. When reporters come out to the provinces to cover a story, it’s a quick trip—they make a round trip in a single day—so we want to take our time. And I think that connection, too, comes from that time spent there. Especially since, as I was saying, the vast majority of journalists are people who know this region well and have personal ties to it as well. People who grew up there, who still live there—so there’s perhaps a personal emotional connection they bring to their articles, which feeds into this sense of connection. And that continues even on social media. We try to be active on social media to talk a bit about the project, so we’re not just putting something out every six months. It’s also about maintaining these communities around us and getting more and more people talking about it.

 "… ( ) I think that having this local connection creates a bond simply by taking an interest in certain issues and reaching out to people who don’t usually have a voice."

Margaux Vulliet: Yes, you try as much as possible to reach out to those people who aren’t necessarily covered in the mainstream media and whom we don’t read about every day. Is that a mission you’ve also set for yourself with *Pays*?

Manon Boquen: That’s part of it. Of course, in the *Pays* issues, there are also profiles of notable figures, and in fact we have a section called “Le pays de” where we follow a notable figure around their local area so they can show us some of the key places that have left a mark on them. So there’s that personality aspect, but aside from that section, it’s really the people who live there—the ones who bring the area to life—and of course, among them are people who might be famous in their neighborhood, whom we see from time to time. But yeah, the point is to give a voice to people who aren’t in the spotlight.

Margaux Vulliet: You yourself write for the magazine—you write an article for every issue. As a journalist, how do you approach a region that—aside from Saint-Malo—you don’t necessarily know in detail, at least?

Manon Boquen: It’s a complex process because, in fact, we start out—like everyone else, since it’s very human to have—preconceived notions about things, so we begin with broad strokes. That’s it, and we imagine certain things. As for the Vercors, I’d only been there once. I thought it was magnificent. So that was my preconceived idea. But then, sure, it’s magnificent—great—but that’s not all there is to it. Afterward, I still read up on it; I research these areas, I try to see what’s being said in the local press—and what keeps coming up? That’s it. And all of that helps me get a general idea of what’s important. Even just one INSEE page on a region or neighborhood can teach you a lot, and that’s often what we see. At the beginning of each issue of *Pays*, we have a two-page spread of infographics on key statistics, particularly poverty rates, the population’s age groups, and so on. So that already tells us a little bit, and then it’s really when we receive the proposals as well—either we’re reaffirmed in our ideas and say to ourselves, “Oh, well, yeah, that’s true, it holds up, this topic fits well,” or, conversely, “Wow, I didn’t expect that to be happening in this area at all,” and that’s interesting too. So we try to work with both approaches, and that’s it—we trust the journalists who suggest topics to us, who are experts and know what they’re talking about. From there, we figure, “Okay, this should hit the mark,” and so far we haven’t had any unpleasant surprises.

Margaux Vulliet: Haven't you gotten any feedback?

Manon Boquen: No, not so far.

Margaux Vulliet: And earlier you were telling me about your interactions with readers. Sometimes they criticize you for not covering this or that topic—how do you take those comments into account, and do you consider that feedback when planning the next issue?

Manon Boquen: We try to be careful, yes. In any case, so far—to come back to those comments for a moment—they haven’t been major issues. We weren’t told, “You’re missing a big part of what this is all about”…

Margaux Vulliet: You’ve never missed the big story…

Manon Boquen: No, no—so, actually, we think to ourselves, “Oh, that’s too bad.” For example, in the Vercors, someone asked us, “Why don’t you talk about the underground passages and caves in the Vercors?” It was something we’d thought about, but in reality, it was just a lack of space. So ultimately, it’s really a matter of choice—we try to do our best and decide what seems most relevant and appropriate to include in the magazine. But unfortunately, there’s bound to be some frustration—we know that—and then, it has to be said, there are also some slightly more personal choices. Take the crows, for example, as I mentioned earlier; they immediately caught my eye. Maybe someone else who hates birds would have said, “Nah, that’s a no-go,” so yeah, that’s a factor too.

Margaux Vulliet: Before each issue, you run a presale campaign, and you also offer subscriptions. How do you convince readers—both men and women—to subscribe to a magazine? And they don’t necessarily know what they’re going to read or where the story will take them; they’ll find out in the next issue. How—did you simply manage to convince people to subscribe?

Manon Boquen: That’s the number one challenge with *Pays*, because we know our main readership is going to be people who live in that area. We’re not under any illusions either. Of course, it also resonates with people who have a connection to the area, even if they no longer live there. But if they grew up there or spent vacations there, well, it speaks to them right away. Then there’s the “tried and true” approach—I don’t know how else to put it—so, you’ve read *Pays*; well, do you like it? The concept of *Pays*—the very idea, in fact, of talking about a region you don’t even know—might make you want to discover it, or maybe not. So subscribe to this concept, to this idea of “Pays,” and discover places you’d never have been able to discover otherwise. Or maybe you’ll never go there, but at least you’ll have a postcard—even if it’s not as glamorous as a typical postcard, with dolphins and all that on it—but that’s the point: just getting a little taste of the place. The idea behind charging is to try to win them over—both now and for the future. And we’ve managed to win people over. And as we were saying a little while ago, it’s about involving readers—whether in choosing the region— it already gives them insights and makes them eager to see that area covered next—and these are things we’ll try to work on moving forward, to better understand how to build connections with them and truly engage them with the very idea of “Pays.”

Margaux Vulliet: You’re also active on social media—Facebook, Instagram—does that help you reach your target audiences as well?

Manon Boquen: Yeah, yeah, totally. And there, too, we found that it really depends on the area. For example, for the first issue, clearly, there are Facebook groups for Saint-Malo—I mean, there are plenty of them, tons of them. So I don’t know if you’re familiar with them, but in almost every city in France there’s a group called “Are you from Saint-Malo too?” or “Practical Saint-Malo,” and so on. And that works really well—it helped us get our name out there on Facebook. Instagram is pretty good too because of the visual aspect, and since we’re a magazine that relies heavily on photos, we’re able to draw people into that dynamic, but it varies. And as I was saying, for example, in Paris and in the Belleville neighborhood, there are far fewer local Facebook groups, so we just make do with what we have. Or there are bookstores. In that case, there are a lot more of them, so they’re platforms that aren’t all the same, and I’d say those are the two main networks we’re able to navigate; Twitter is a bit more of a niche platform, or we tend to reach out more to fellow journalists. Actually, in those cases, that’s fine too, but we don’t want to be—and that’s not our goal at all—read only by journalists.

Margaux Vulliet: Can we say a few words about Issue #4—which is scheduled for September, if I’m not mistaken… well, October—can we say a few words about it already, or is it still a secret?

Manon Boquen: No, no, it’s not a secret. Yeah, we can say a few words about it: this issue will be about Mayotte. We’re switching gears again completely, after the Belleville neighborhood. To give you a little insight into the options we had, I think, for this fourth issue: there was Perpignan, there was the Avesnois region—in northern France, near Maubeuge—and there was Mayotte. Mayotte won by a landslide, and that’s interesting because, actually, among our subscribers we didn’t have many people from Mayotte—it was mostly people who were curious. “Oh, Mayotte—what’s that?” ” As it happens, it’s a territory surrounded by a lot of misconceptions, and, let’s just say that the media coverage of Mayotte is always the same—it’s always about the immigration issue in Mayotte; that’s it, that’s pretty much the only thing we hear here from mainland France. So it’s great because it makes us want to show something completely different—and, you see, in Mayotte, of course the immigration issue is present, but there are plenty of other things, and that’s amazing. And it made us even happier when we were looking for journalists to work there and got comments from some people like, “But you’re going to do an entire episode on Mayotte, right?” “Yeah, yeah, that’s right,” “Oh, great, yeah, this is actually the first time we’ve been offered something like this,” so it’s really great, too, to have the chance to talk in depth about a territory, and overall, it’s the same for all the overseas territories, which get very little—if any—coverage in the national media. So, in this case, we’re going to focus on that one.

Margaux Vulliet: Listen, thank you so much, Manon.

Manon Boquen: Thank you, Margaux, and thank you for inviting me.

Margaux Vulliet: Thank you to everyone for listening. You can find all our episodes on streaming platforms. You can also find our newsletter in your inbox every two weeks. Thank you, and see you next time.