On October 15th, two French media organizations quietly launched what could become models for a more cooperative internet serving journalism. Basta!, an investigative media outlet founded in 2008 and specializing in social and environmental issues, unveiled the Independent Media Portal, a freely accessible aggregator featuring articles from over 80 French media outlets and 200 international media organizations. The same day, La Presse libre, a coalition of progressive national and local publications, launched a shared subscription platform connecting eight publications under a single monthly offer at €19.90.
Regain control of information flow
Both initiatives share the same ambition: to restore a direct connection with audiences in a media landscape marked by concentration of titles in the hands of conservative shareholders or billionaires. They also claim financial independence, based on reader donations (for Basta!) or subscriptions (for La Presse libre), rather than on advertisers or shareholders.
But their independence concerns more than just their resources. It touches on how information circulates, and who controls access to it. For years, independent media outlets have relied on platforms like Meta or Google to distribute their content. But as these companies changed their algorithms, downranked news, and banned political, social, and electoral advertising in Europe, their goals diverged from those of journalism.
Publishers are now seeking to regain control over the tools themselves for distribution and discovery, by rebuilding their own infrastructures rather than depending on Silicon Valley. This movement is part of a broader European push toward technological independence, where newsrooms are developing open source or internal tools to realign their technologies with their editorial values.
From the cultural battle to the technological battle
« We've moved from a cultural battle to a technological one, » sums up Nicolas Camier, head of development at Basta!.
Over the past decade, traffic from social media has collapsed. "We went from 38% in 2017 to 4% in 2024 in traffic coming from Facebook," explains Nicolas Camier. With each algorithm change, independent media outlets became a bit more invisible. Yet the drop in traffic did not endanger the Basta! model — it transformed it.
The site today attracts around 250,000 monthly visits and has 25,000 newsletter subscribers, a loyal base that supports its donation-based model. "Over the past ten years, we've seen annual growth of 10 to 15% in donation revenue," Camier adds. As its reach diminished, its support community strengthened: a smaller but engaged audience is better than a large public that will never contribute. And readers, he says, are willing to fund the infrastructure that guarantees independence.
A human Google News for independent press
Rather than trying to recover traffic from social media, the Portal team came up with a tool that gathers and promotes articles from other independent media outlets: a kind of human Google News for alternative press. The site is freely accessible and aims to rely entirely on donations, thanks to €160,000 in crowdfunding, a €40,000 loan from the Fund for a Free Press, and a €36,000 grant from Journalismfund Europe.
The Portal remains modest at this stage, with around 1,500 daily visits a month after its launch. But the goal is not to keep readers within the Basta! ecosystem: it's about circulating attention, trust, and visibility among peers. The ambition is to amplify the democratic impact of independent journalism, to reconnect with audiences distant from traditional media, to break down information bubbles, and to offer a safe space, free from advertising and trackers.
A solution to subscription fatigue
The Libre Press follows the same logic: not chasing clicks, but chasing meaning.
Free Press tackles another weak point in the independent media sector: subscription fatigue. Its eight founding publications — including Rue89 Bordeaux, Rue89 Lyon, Rue89 Strasbourg, Arrêt sur images, Politis, Mediacités, Next, Reflets — now share a common technical and payment infrastructure while maintaining their editorial independence. Subscribers can access all publications from a single space with one login.
"We recorded 2,500 subscriptions in the first month, 40% of them before the official launch," Jean-Marie Leforestier notes. "People subscribed not so much to the product as to the promise." In response to the growing concentration of media, he describes the project as a strategic answer: the challenge is not so much about scale as about consistency.
Cooperating to carry more weight
In France, historic titles like Le Monde have more than half a million subscribers; Mediapart, one of the largest independent newsrooms, has around 245,000. Individually, the eight titles brought together under La Presse libre are more modest — but together, their 55,000 to 60,000 paying subscribers represent a genuine national audience. "When you bring all these 'small' media outlets together, you create an editorial density that makes sense," Leforestier continues. "Individually, some may seem like niche complements; together, they form a true service."
The real wager is not financial: it's about cooperation.
In both cases, it's as much about experimenting with forms of governance as technical infrastructures: testing whether independence can also mean working together. Basta!, with the Portal, is building a tool that amplifies the work of its peers while strengthening its mission: making independent journalism more visible.
For Nicolas Camier, it's just a stepping stone.
La Presse libre goes even further: the eight publications are already united within a common association, sharing decisions and visibility on an equal footing. "It's a bet on neutrality," says Jean-Marie Leforestier. "We're not super editors-in-chief. Each newsroom remains fully sovereign. Our role is simply to make their work visible together."
A different internet for journalism
On the other side of the Atlantic, a similar approach to building collective and independent tools for journalism emerged in Canada. After Meta's decision in 2023 to block links to news articles, several independent media outlets joined forces to create Unrigged, a platform that aggregates articles, podcasts, and newsletters from partner newsrooms in a chronological feed with no algorithm. The project, led by podcast producer André Goulet, came to fruition in just five months. In Montreal as in Paris, the logic is the same: turn away from platforms that once promised visibility in favor of shared infrastructure controlled by communities.
The quiet alliances forming behind Basta!, La Presse libre, Unrigged, and others may not overturn algorithms — but they could shift the balance of power. By taking back control of their tools, these media outlets are doing more than resist the flow: they're laying the groundwork for a different internet for journalism.
To go further
These initiatives are part of a broader movement to reclaim technological sovereignty and foster cooperation among independent media outlets:
- Banned by Meta, Canada's independent press breaks free – Owen Huchon recounts how Canadian media outlets created their own tools after Meta blocked news links.
- Editorial independence also depends on the tools used – An article on the rise of open source solutions and independent infrastructure in European media.
- Where democratic freedoms are threatened by the rise of the far right and where media concentration undermines information diversity, pooling resources becomes essential for independent outlets.
