1. AI (Les Échos) — Le Monde announced it has reached an agreement with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. According to the newspaper, "the agreement between Le Monde and OpenAI allows this company, for the duration of the agreement, to rely on Le Monde's corpus as one of the major references for establishing and validating its responses". While other media outlets have been able to sign similar partnerships in the United States or Germany, this is a first for a French media organization. The agreement, whose amount was not disclosed, has raised questions and even criticism, but Le Monde assures it will be " beneficial for the entire profession".
2. INDEPENDENCE (The Letter) — The future of weekly magazine Le 1 will be written with François Pinault, who entered the capital of its publishing company at the start of the year. The billionaire, who made his fortune in the luxury and distribution sectors, now holds 40% of FGH Invest. The remaining 60% is held by its founders, Éric Fottorino, Natalie Thiriez and Laurent Greilsamer's family.
3. TOOLS (Contexte) — Inspired by The New York Times, the team at Contexte, an independent online media outlet aimed at political professionals, has developed its own “custom-built” collaborative editing tool called Écho. This tool now replaces the suite of tools—including Google Docs—that the editorial team had been using until now.
4. SUCCESSION (Mediapart) — Carine Fouteau, journalist at Mediapart since its launch in 2008 and specialist in migration issues, will take over from Edwy Plenel as president and editor-in-chief. The announcement thus closes a cycle of successions that has led to the renewal of much of the media outlet's leadership, with the successive appointments last year of Cécile Sourd, named chief executive, as well as Valentine Oberti and Lénaïg Bredoux, who became co-editorial directors.
5. LOCAL PRESS (CMPF) — This study recently published examines "media deserts" within the European Union, those areas where local press has almost disappeared. It maps territories at risk based on several factors such as journalists' working conditions or the undermining of editorial independence in the media.
6. NEW MEDIA (New York Times) — Despite the successive closures of online media outlets such as Buzzfeed and Vice, new information startups are carving out a place for themselves in a rapidly changing landscape. They go by the names Puck, Punchbowl News, The Ankler and Semafor and embrace a model that keeps spending in check, a departure from their predecessors. Rather than relying on contributions from wealthy investors, "the formula adopted by these new startups is based instead on sustainable growth built on a diverse range of revenue streams such as advertising, paid subscriptions, and sponsored events".
7. DATA JOURNALISM (The Verge) — Mona Chalabi's style, as a journalist and illustrator, is almost immediately recognizable: complex, even heavy subjects illustrated with visuals featuring simple lines and bright colors. Awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her data visualization work on Jeff Bezos's wealth, she has been publishing infographics about the Gaza conflict on social media for the past few months. In this interview with The Verge, she discusses her illustration creation process.
8. PAPER (Colorado Sun) — Last August, in Colorado, more than 80 newspapers suddenly found themselves without printing presses after the announcement of the closure of a printing facility owned by Gannett Publishing Co. The National Trust for Local News, whose mission is to support local journalism, then set out to purchase used printing presses, shipped from Canada. By May, around twenty hyperlocal newspapers will be able to print there.
9. JOURNALISTS (The Media Review) — Inside the daily lives of the scrollers at BFMTV, the unsung hands behind the famous ticker of the channel that regularly faces mockery, even controversy, over its errors or inaccuracies. But behind the myth of the clumsy intern lies a team of journalists who—under pressure—is not immune to mistakes.
10. GAMES (New York Times) — Did you find last Friday's Wordle? It was the thousandth edition of the game purchased by the New York Times in 2022. As proof that games now play a crucial role in the newspaper's growth and diversification strategy, the New York Times organized a series of events throughout the day, including lighting up the Empire State Building in Wordle colors, no less.
EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version suggested that FGH Invest, the company in which François Pinault acquired a 40% stake, also published the magazines Zadig and Légende, which is inaccurate. The sentence has therefore been corrected.
