Clémentine Labrosse is co-founder of Censored and trouble editions. She is a guest on the third season of Chemins, the Médianes podcast.
In this episode of the third season of our podcast *Chemins*, I’m joined by Clémentine Labrosse, co-founder of Éditions Trouble and the feminist magazine *Censored*, which she founded in 2018 with her sister Apolline. In 2022, the co-founders decided to slow down publication to maintain their work-life balance and stay true to their values. A year later, Censored discontinued its print edition and announced a transition to a web platform. How can one balance editorial ambition with mental health, and reinvent a media outlet without compromising its core values?
Slow down to protect your mental health
Founded in 2018, Censored has established itself as a magazine unlike any other thanks to its radical spirit and its commitment to staying true to an intimate and human vision of feminism and publishing. But this commitment comes at a price. In 2023, Clémentine and Apolline Labrosse announced an important decision: to slow down Censored’s publication schedule, reducing it from two issues a year to just one.
At the time, they explained in a newsletter addressed to their readers: “We don’t want to grow Censored in the way most people understand it; it’s our choice to remain on an extremely human scale, to keep our editorial project as ambitious as it is personal. We don’t want to be ‘entrepreneurs’ ready to take over the whole world; we don’t want to conquer anything.”
This transition allowed them to reevaluate their approach to dealing with pressure: “At the time, we were working on two projects simultaneously. We had both a book with Trouble Press—which had come to an end under rather difficult circumstances—and an issue of *Censored* to put out, for which we’d been volunteering for six years. It was all getting to be a bit too much. We didn’t want to stop at all—we still had plenty of ideas, and we really wanted to keep going—but we realized we didn’t have to force ourselves to keep up a pace we couldn’t sustain. We told ourselves it was okay. We tried to take the drama out of the idea of slowing down and, therefore, changing the publication schedule.”
The end of print review and the digital transition
With its tenth issue, *Holy Night*, released in late 2024, *Censored* bids farewell as a print magazine.
This decision is driven by financial and organizational realities, as well as a desire to reinvent the project in a new form: a web platform. This new format will allow us to experiment with more flexible and responsive formats, with a focus on artistic curation, event organization, and perhaps exhibitions.
The financial cost of each issue played a decisive role in this decision: “Each issue costs us 22,000 euros to produce, including 14,000 euros for printing alone. Money was the number one source of anxiety.” In addition to the high costs, coordinating the projects placed a significant mental strain on the team. In late 2024, the team even launched a major raffle aimed at paying off a persistent debt to their printer.
Despite these constraints, Clémentine Labrosse refuses to view this transition as a defeat: “Bringing something to an end is neither a failure nor a source of shame. On the contrary, it’s a source of pride to tell yourself that you can move on to the next thing because you have plenty of other ideas. “Everything changes, and everything is a continuation. The real failure would have been to keep going and end up burned out.” For her, the magazine’s closure isn’t a definitive end, but a natural and necessary transformation.
However, this transition involves striving to preserve the essence of Censored in a digital world, “which is hard to explain, because it marks the end of the magazine but not of its vision. (…) The question of art has always been there and has always interested us. The web will allow us to be more efficient and spontaneous.”
At the same time, the Labrosse sisters are continuing their work on their publishing house, Éditions Trouble, maintaining a moderate and sustainable pace: “We plan to stick to three books a year. (…) This pace allows us to automate things a bit more so we can move faster without burning out.”
Staying true to feminist values in the face of economic pressures
The co-founders often refused to sacrifice their feminist principles for conventional business models. They experimented with alternative approaches, such as an "All Inclusive" cultural subscription.
“At one point, we came up with this subscription plan that included cultural items we had curated. In other words, for 150 euros a year, you’d get our two magazines, two books, our merchandise, invitations to theater events, and so on. We thought about a lot of things. We wanted to get around the system as much as we could, but we realized it was too complicated. Finding a business model for a magazine that relies solely on sales is a miracle. We had absolutely no desire to get into equity financing, shares, or any of that.”
Clémentine highlights the difficulty of reconciling feminist commitment with capitalist enterprise: “Elvire Duvelle-Charles’s book, *Feminism and Social Media*, addresses this very well. (…) This type of entrepreneurship, which views growth as the sole measure of success, we found to be at odds with our vision. At first, when we’d promote a new issue, there was this pressure to constantly bombard people with content—creating formats, mock-ups, and visuals all the time, every day—checking the algorithm, sponsoring posts… You get so caught up in it so quickly that it can become a little dangerous. At one point, we simply said to ourselves: “Come on, let’s stop.”
The importance of collective action and experimentation
Censored has always relied on a collective approach, collaborating with about thirty people per issue. However, this format made it difficult to forge deep connections with each contributor.
“At a magazine, you work with about thirty people, but the relationship is fairly superficial. That can be frustrating. In contrast, with Éditions Trouble, the connection with an author is deeper and can last for years.”
Clémentine also emphasizes the importance of having a support system to overcome obstacles. “It’s really important to break the notion that you shouldn’t show your vulnerability. (…) Community is the strength we need to overcome our doubts. All around us, lots of journalists have started media outlets and have gone through the same questions and anxieties as we have. When you realize that you can just say, ‘Hi, I’m writing because I actually have a question about this—what do you think?’, it changes everything. Sharing ideas is a given.”
"Chemins" is a podcast produced by Médianes. Season 3 is hosted by Marine Slavitch and produced by Morgan Prudhomme. The sound design is by Nicolas Peiron, and the visual design is by Christelle Perrin.
