For over three years at Médianes, we've been supporting media founders as they launch their editorial products, with one goal: to bring new voices to life, sustainably. We know how delicate it can be to undertake this venture without reference points or examples around you — all the more so in an economically challenging context for press publishers. The book Create a Media aims to provide keys to understanding this complex ecosystem where threats and opportunities multiply, as well as advice for successfully navigating it.
Every step of media creation, from idea to launch
Editorial, marketing, funding… with Create a Media, we sought to provide a practical resource to support the development of a viable and virtuous editorial and economic model.
This guide walks you through every step of media creation: laying the groundwork for your project (chapter 1), defining your media's target audience (chapter 2), choosing your business model (chapter 3), refining your media's value proposition (chapter 4), and preparing for launch (chapter 5).
For each of these steps, we've gathered advice, practical resources, case studies, and insights from media founders.
Practical resources to support the launch of your project
The book Create a Media gives you access to a set of practical resources that let you work concretely on developing your media throughout the chapters.
You'll discover our methods for building personas, conducting audience research, running a crowdfunding campaign, writing your manifesto…
Beyond the advice and explanations in the book, you'll gain access to an online resource portal where you can use practical resources: downloadable documents, templates to fill out, and models.
Interviews with founders and experts
In recent years, new players have emerged: media outlets offering an engaged perspective on our times, putting their audience at the heart of their model, proving that quality journalism close to its audience is possible. Among them are media like Vert, La Déferlante, Zetland, La Disparition, Brief.me, La Revue Écossaise.
We met with their founders to benefit from their experience and to bring the methods and principles delivered in the book to life.
In Create a Media, you'll find exclusive interviews with media leaders and founders. Among them:
- Lucie Geffroy, co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the feminist review La Déferlante;
- Juliette Quef, co-founder of Vert, an online media focused on ecology;
- Laurent Mauriac, founder of the online news outlet Brief.me and co-president of Spiil;
- Annabelle Perrin, co-founder of the epistolary media La Disparition;
- Tav Klitgaard, director of Zetland, a Danish slow journalism outlet that takes a long-term approach to journalism;
- Assa Samaké-Roman, co-founder of *La Revue Écossaise*;
- Augustin Naepels, CEO and co-founder of the online media outlet Les Jours;
- Nathalie Sonnac, a researcher in media economics and a professor at Panthéon-Assas University.
The book *Créer un média* also cites numerous examples of independent media outlets that we find inspiring for the relevance of their editorial and business models: StreetPress, Kometa, Mediacités, The Dial, Les Others, Reporterre, The Bristol Cable, Tortoise, Contexte, Arrêt sur images, Socialter, Gaze Magazine, Censored, Mediavivant… and many others.
Throughout these pages, we also take a look behind the scenes at the launch of Médianes and the experience of creating *Pays*, a magazine co-founded by the Médianes team. This is an opportunity to share our experience and offer the advice we wish we’d had when we launched.
Check out the book *Creating a Media Outlet*
The book is now available for pre-order for 14 euros on the Médianes online store.
To celebrate its launch, we’re also hosting a launch party on Tuesday, April 2, starting at 7 p.m., at La Gaîté Lyrique (75003 Paris). There will be a panel discussion on the topic “How to Create a Media Outlet in 2024.” We’ll explore how to develop an independent media outlet over the long term and ensure its sustainability after launch, with insights from several founders: Juliette Quef (Vert), Johan Weisz-Myara (StreetPress), Éric Fottorino (Le 1), Florent Peiffer (Urbania), and Marine Doux (Médianes).
About Médianes
Launched in 2020, Médianes is a strategy, marketing, and design studio, as well as a nonprofit media organization, dedicated to media executives. Its goal? To help newsrooms produce high-quality journalism and monetize it through their audiences in a sustainable way.
Médianes, the media outlet: Through articles, newsletters, practical guides, and a podcast, we aim to inform, highlight, and share best practices, good ideas, and strategies for developing independent and socially conscious media outlets and transforming the mainstream media. Every month, more than 3,500 media founders, executives, journalists, marketing professionals, and students read our roundup.
Médianes, the studio: We support more than 80 newsrooms on topics related to strategy, marketing, design, technology, and management. Among them: La Déferlante, RFI, Vert, Arrêt sur images, POLITICO, StreetPress, AOC, Pays, Beaux Arts, La Disparition, Contexte, 60 millions de consommateurs, Mediabask, Reporters Without Borders, Disclose, Kometa, Afrotopiques, mūsae, TheMetaNews, and more.
Médianes is an entrepreneurial and non-profit initiative that supports media outlets, their founders, and the people who create them. To learn more about Médianes, visit our About Us page.
