💡
This article was originally published in Medians' 10 Links newsletter, sent every other Monday at 2pm. Sign up here!
- INDEPENDENCE (Medians) — While some newsrooms have chosen to leave X or Meta platforms, what about their everyday tools? Google Docs, Slack, Adobe, and Windows structure their work and often represent a significant blind spot. However, some media outlets have bet on alternatives that are free, open source, or developed in-house: a choice for independence, control, and also a gesture for the environment.
- PLATFORMS (Medians x CJR) — In October, Meta blocked all advertising deemed "political, electoral or social" in Europe, citing overly restrictive European regulation. Result: media outlets like La Croix, Vert and XXI saw their subscription and donation campaigns suddenly suspended. A harsh decision that underscores the urgent need to reduce dependence on platforms.
P.S. This article, originally published in English in the Columbia Journalism Review, was written by Marine Doux, editorial director of Médianes, as part of her research work at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism.
- JOURNALISM (The Media Review) — Born in 2005 during the riots in the French suburbs, the Bondy Blog was originally an experiment by Swiss media outlet L'Hebdo. Now a fully-fledged newsroom, it is today recognized as a reference point, a stepping stone for young journalists, and a pioneer of free-access digital media.
P.S. Sarah Ichou, director of the Bondy Blog, was a guest on the third season of Chemins, the podcast by Médianes.
- MODEL (The Audiencers) — Too activist, incompatible with young people or too risky for subscriptions: donations to fund media have long been the subject of misconceptions. Yet many newsrooms have made it a cornerstone of their model. Médianes was invited to the The Audiencers festival to debunk the clichés and reaffirm the benefits of donations.
- INTERNET (The Verge) — For a long time, the web has been an important space for expression and resources for trans people. But as their rights face serious threats and transphobic discourse proliferates, the web itself is in crisis: security, AI, platform dominance… So many challenges that The Verge explores in this (very excellent) investigation.
💡
ANNOUNCEMENT — A European Club of Independent Media? Médianes is considering how to develop Sphera, the network it coordinates in Europe. Share your thoughts!
- AI (CJR) — AI-powered browsers like Atlas (OpenAI) and Comet (Perplexity) are hitting the market and creating a new challenge for media outlets: capable of summarizing articles, they sometimes access paid content by bypassing paywalls and ignoring certain anti-bot protections.
- ETHICS (Arrêt sur images) — CNews's ethical breaches are no longer surprising anyone and are regularly addressed by ARCOM. But on TikTok, the channel throws off all constraints and goes even further, broadcasting sensationalist videos by condensing news briefs into just a few seconds, with no respect for basic journalism principles. TikTok or TV report, the standards must nonetheless be the same.
- ETHICS (Libération) — Funding a media outlet through sponsorship is not forbidden, but requires extreme vigilance. For example, Hugo Clément recently overlooked a few ethical principles by promoting a company "respectful of the environment" in a video dedicated to climate change. An opportunity to review certain rules on the subject.
- ARCHIVING (Nieman Lab) — The Wayback Machine, the go-to tool for web archiving, has recorded an 87% drop in saved homepage pages from media outlets in recent months. CNN, Kyiv Post, Le Monde… entire days have thus disappeared from the archives. A reminder that preserving online journalism and our digital memory cannot depend on a single player.
P.S. Wondering why web archiving is essential? We explain why (and how to get involved).
- DESIGN (It's Nice That) — Medieval typefaces, dark colors, menacing castles: gothic aesthetics are everywhere, but it's about more than just style. Its return on the web may reflect collective anxiety in the face of an opaque and unsettling Internet; a form of visual defiance comparable to punk or grunge's stance against a milieu seen as oppressive.
