The context
A territorial exploration through journalism
Pays, an annual publication, is dedicated to a specific territory with each issue, taking a comprehensive approach to local subjects. This publication is the result of close collaboration between two founders of Médianes — Christelle Perrin, design director, and Baptiste Thevelein, projects director — with journalist Manon Boquen and photographer Benoît Michaëly.
The art direction, layout and design of each issue, all maps and infographics, and the website design were created by Médianes.
The same applies to marketing strategies, subscriptions, crowdfunding campaigns, routing, distribution, and relationships with customers and partners.
Create and distribute a local news publication, from start to finish.
Launched in 2020, Pays is an independent print magazine co-founded by Médianes. We develop the editorial direction, value proposition and target audiences, supporting Pays at every stage. We also created the visual identity, the magazine layout and website, and we develop our own pre-sale campaigns on the magazine's website.
Creating a manifesto, a newsletter, and setting up an online community: we developed an economic model centered on crowdfunding and bookstore sales. Pays is printed between 2,000 and 4,000 copies depending on the issue.
The story between Médianes and Pays illustrates our commitment to merging expertise in media management and direction with creativity and graphic innovation. Our goal? To enable the transformation of a journalistic vision into a quality, engaging publication without compromising it, by using digital marketing strategies, attractive design and effective strategic planning to create an independent and sustainable local media outlet.
A space for experiments and encounters
The magazine Pays is intrinsically linked to Médianes' projects, the studio, and even its creation. By allowing us to understand the day-to-day prerogatives and issues in running an independent print publication, Pays enables us to be more concrete and willing to fully grasp the questions and challenges faced by media founders and directors. From editorial meetings to direct exchanges as part of customer service, to issues around mailing print magazines, printing, paying journalists, accounting and administrative tasks, Pays allows us to strengthen and continuously question our expertise.
Through in-store events and public-facing activities, Médianes also promotes a new economic model to support quality journalism and sustainable, virtuous projects.
Governance, financing: what connections between Countries and Medianes?
Pays's revenue goes toward paying journalists, printing and distributing the magazine. This model is currently possible because Médianes, as a co-founding structure of the magazine, is able to dedicate time to the project and pay two of Pays's four co-founders. In exchange, Pays allows Médianes to experiment, develop technical, marketing, and entrepreneurial solutions useful to the organization, and to gain an intimate understanding of what it takes to run an independent media outlet daily, without advertising or compromises.
About
Published once a year, Pays is a magazine made and printed in France. With each issue, Pays focuses on a single territory. Whether a city, a region or a neighbourhood, Pays adjusts its lens to address global issues through a local angle. Investigations, reports, portraits, maps and infographics—Pays explores a territory to better understand our society. Christelle Perrin and Baptiste Thevelein, co-founders of Médianes, also co-founded the magazine Pays alongside journalist Manon Boquen and photographer Benoît Michaëly.
Pays is edited by its four co-founders, united within the press company Les éditions Pays, whose sole activity is publishing the magazine. Without advertising, Pays is funded by single-issue sales and subscriptions from its readers. Each issue is the subject of a pre-sales campaign and is subsequently distributed in bookstores.
