Management is often considered the weak point in media organizations, primarily due to lack of training for people who find themselves leading journalism teams. Yet several situations can lead journalists to take on management positions and oversee teams.
A very linear progression
In media, management positions are often filled by journalists and viewed as promotions rather than a genuine desire to lead a team. A very linear career vision that isn't unique to the media sector, for that matter. "We often see the manager position as a career progression to earn more, without it matching a real desire to perform this role. That's not the case with us. We created a salary grid to avoid this. The downside is that it's hard to attract good managers without good salaries," explained Jean-Christophe Boulanger, CEO of Contexte, an independent online media outlet serving political professionals in France and Europe, in an episode of our podcast Chemins. In most newsrooms, you start as an intern, then become a freelancer, then a permanent journalist, section editor, deputy editor-in-chief, editor-in-chief... That's how it works, and old habits die hard.
Yet more and more newsrooms—whether independent or not, young or long-established—are being called out by their employees and former employees for management that ranges from non-existent to downright toxic. This criticism extends to journalism schools as well. In both cases, the same terms keep coming up: a culture of overinvestment, passion-driven work, burnout, psychological suffering.
Ensure the well-being of teams
In the specific case of media creators, it is often desirable for the team to grow beyond the founders themselves. These founders tend to launch their media business by partnering with friends, spouses, or even family members. Bringing in outside people and ensuring their integration within their media outlet can therefore prove complex, since these individuals often lack the same experience, habits, or culture.
This case also raises questions about commitment within the media outlet. When a company is still young, co-founders tend — and it is often out of necessity — to prioritize work over personal life to grow the business and give it every chance of success. However, it is unrealistic to expect the same degree of commitment from all people who join the team later, regardless of their position or type of contract.
« The end never justifies the means. The only people who can take risks on a media outlet should be shareholders and they should do so with full knowledge of the facts. On the other hand, all the people who are subordinates — journalists, technicians, editors — must be paid and benefit from collective agreements. A company relies on its human resources. They must be taken care of », affirmed Valentin Levetti, founder of the online media outlet Stupid Economics, in the second season of our podcast Chemins.
The idea of "caring" is fundamental. It can be related to the concept of the ethics of care. This is a contemporary moral philosophy movement linked to feminism and promoted by psychologist Carol Gilligan in her book In a Different Voice. At the heart of this principle are the foundations of a vision of society structured by attention to others, with values such as care, responsibility, mutual aid and consideration of needs, relationships and particular situations. In a professional context, the challenge is to establish better relationships with peers, and to foster dialogue, sharing of ideas and collective problem-solving while taking into account everyone's interests.
Let's stop rehashing concepts and raising the same problems by calling for things to change one way or another. Concretely, what can managers focus on to foster the well-being of their teams?
We have compiled a series of best practices, drawn from our own experience at Médianes as well as from media organizations that clearly expose their management practices, or that we have encountered over the past three years. Some media organizations are therefore cited more regularly than others, which does not mean that we consider their organization—or ours—to be perfect. This list is intended to evolve and diversify.
1. Warmly welcoming newcomers
The first impression that potential future employees form of your company takes shape during the recruitment process. How do you communicate about job openings? What does your job description look like? What are the different stages of your recruitment process? And finally: how do you welcome your new hires into your team?
- Ensure proper distribution: In theory, a job posting won't fit in a tweet if it includes information about the job title, contract type, location, and compensation details. In short, the bare minimum. The job descriptions from the online media outlet HugoDécrypte are created using the collaborative tool Notion — it's a bit like Google Docs — and contain clear information about the nature of the role, the profile sought, the work environment, and the recruitment process. This clarity saves considerable time for the candidate, who immediately knows what they're getting into, just as it does for the company, which avoids unfocused interviews with candidates who wouldn't be a good fit for the position.
- Set up an onboarding programme: Caring for the arrival process of new employees takes time. But a well-trained person integrated into the structure saves that time elsewhere. Once recruitment is complete, it's important to prepare for your new team member's first days. To do this, it can be useful to create a welcome guide that helps them understand and access the company's tools, methods, practices, values and culture. At Médianes, each new arrival benefits from a dedicated contact person, a training and meeting programme with each team member, and a welcome sheet that helps them understand and access the company's tools, methods, practices, values and culture. This sheet also contains team biographies, an overview of our organisation and our editorial and ethics charter.
- Setting good working conditions: A new job is exciting and often demanding. That said, it's certain that we work much better when we're well rested. The survey site Mediapart has thus implemented charters on the right to disconnect and on remote work guidelines, in addition to self-reported time management tools. Human resources ensures their compliance and regularly reminds employees to take their time off, as Cécile Sourd, the publication's chief executive, explained to us in this episode of the second season of our podcast Chemins.
- Pay fairly: Team well-being depends partly on transparent and equitable compensation to avoid frustration and inequality. Like the media criticism website Arrêt sur images, publishing a salary scale is a sign of trust and transparency for your audiences, employees, and potential future hires.
« The foundation is paying people properly. It seems obvious, but it's not necessarily when you work in media. Creating very detailed job descriptions as well, having regular check-ins. Every three months, I have a 360-degree review with each of my employees. I give feedback, set objectives, discuss what worked well and what didn't. It goes both ways: in the second part of the interview, we look at how I can optimize things, do better, organize myself better as a manager. » — Christelle Tissot, founder of the mental health media outlet mūsae.
2. Allow all voices to be heard
Not everyone starts on equal footing in the workplace. As a result, it's common to see differences in how legitimate people feel, stemming potentially from both employee age and gender, class, or ethnicity biases.
- Enable everyone to take on leadership roles: Horizontal management and feminism are closely connected in that they share values of equality, inclusivity, and collective ownership. Since feminism aims to dismantle patriarchal structures that favor power dynamics, why not try a rotating editorial leadership, like Rue89 Lyon and Reporterre? A good way to diversify approaches and perspectives, while enabling everyone to take on leadership responsibilities.
- Being aware of your biases: If I'm a straight editor, am I the best person to edit a text about LGBTQIA+ struggles? », asks the team of the journal Censored in its Feminist self-publishing ABC. The question is linked to that of human resources within a feminist enterprise: who is best placed to proofread or translate a text without distorting it with their own lived experience? Calling on those directly concerned to review what you publish can be a good idea.
- Ensuring inclusivity internally: At Mediapart, a monitoring and mediation role is carried out by journalist Lénaïg Bredoux, editorial director for gender issues within the company. The journalist, who also works with the media's human resources department, ensures that every article published by Mediapart is inclusive both in its language and in the people interviewed, and that internally, everyone feels valued and respected.
- Getting closer to associations: Inspired by the Association of LGBTQI+ Journalists (AJL) and the feminist association Taking the Front Page, 160 journalists created, in April 2023, the Association of Anti-Racist and Racialized Journalists (AJAR) to tackle racism and lack of representation in the media. The SNJ-CGT survey on racism in the media, published on the occasion of their launch, revealed that 24.2% of those surveyed had been victims of racism in the newsroom, while 47.1% had witnessed it. It may be worthwhile to reach out to these various associations (AJAR, AJL, Taking the Front Page) to implement management practices suited to your media outlet, to ensure that everyone feels comfortable in their work environment.
« Several years ago at Mediapart, we conducted a small internal survey to measure how speaking time was distributed in editorial meetings. Even though the figure is approximate, we concluded that men spoke 80% of the time. Today our editorial meetings are often led by women, and we have appointed "monitors" responsible for ensuring that no one interrupts anyone else, that people don't speak too loudly, that some don't speak just to repeat what has already been said. The truth of the figures is not enough, it can't just be quantitative—what really matters is how you act on it afterwards. » — Lénaïg Bredoux, editorial co-director and editorial lead for gender issues at Mediapart.
3. Be transparent
About pages, disclosures of interests, content on editorial processes, open editorial meetings… Facing their audiences' distrust, media outlets are increasingly playing the transparency card. Why not apply these processes internally?
- Create a clear "About" page: The Marseille investigative media Marsactu publishes the identity of its media, technical and associative partners. The "About" page thus proves useful for readers as well as for the media's contributors. Reporterre follows the same strategy and lists the editorial activities that the editorial team pursues alongside the website: publications, books or even media partnerships that bring them 3% of revenue.
- Publishing accounts and statements of interest: Since 2013, Contexte has analyzed developments in French and European public policy. In this ecosystem, the topics covered are often sensitive or may be subject to public distrust regarding the relationship between journalists and elected officials. Hence the importance of showing its credentials to readers through a code of ethics. Contexte has thus published the media's statements of interest and the percentage each shareholder holds in the company. This transparency has become a recruitment argument for the professional media outlet. Like the company's accounts, the public policy media exchanges its strategic choices with the entire team each month.
- Promote information sharing within the company: At Mediapart, the editorial meeting is open to everyone every day, as are key moments when figures, results and projects are shared, such as during the newspaper's 15th anniversary.
- Choosing a participatory model: A Scop is a cooperative and participatory company. It is a business model in which employees own more than half of the capital and participate in decision-making. In France, Alternatives Économiques, Rue89 Lyon, Le Crestois and Fracas have adopted this model, which enables complete transparency among employee shareholders.
« Based on our political convictions and our respective experiences, we really wanted a business model that goes against the grain of capitalist enterprise, which is characterized by the crushing power of capital over the fate of the business and its employees. In a conventional business model, you can easily do whatever you want regarding the transparency of accounts, tell employees that everything is going badly and capture a good portion of the profits » — Clément Quintard, co-founder of Fracas and former deputy editor-in-chief at Socialter.
4. Learning to Delegate
Trust, expertise and interpersonal skills… delegation requires competencies that are far from innate, and the demands it places often increase both the workload and mental burden on managers. Yet when delegation is optimized, every stakeholder benefits.
- Building: Fostering a learning mindset drives productivity, innovation, and employee retention in the workplace. Three conditions define this culture: ambition, acceptance of failure, and autonomy. In practice, this means giving everyone the opportunity to learn from their experiences and remain in continuous learning. Companies such as Etsy realize this vision by establishing internal "schools" and regularly analyzing successes and failures without assigning blame, allowing everyone to learn from mistakes. This approach, rooted in trust and good faith among individuals, enables more effective and harmonious delegation on both sides.
- Empowerment: "The power to decide belongs by default to the person taking action". At Contexte, we find a culture of subsidiarity, which means that the person in charge is the one closest to the action. One of the key values that governs the organization, alongside empowering each individual, promoting high standards, and seeking a balance between personal and professional life. Artificial intelligence, questions of gender and ethnicity, new uses: in the same vein, creating working groups with those most directly concerned, as the Insider group did, allows us to include and evolve the organization on key issues.
- Break your habits: It can be enriching to delegate certain tasks that you're used to doing daily. What you've been doing routinely for a long time, someone with a fresh perspective could do it differently and perhaps even more efficiently. Delegation isn't simply about transferring responsibilities. It also means expanding your comfort zone and reconsidering what each person is capable of doing.
« Many people are hesitant about delegation. The main reasons are the fear of wasting time or the work being done poorly. This is based on a false belief that no one else can complete the task as well as you can. It's essentially a fear of losing control. However, delegating a task while requiring it to be done exactly as you would do it limits the group of people you could ask to do the work. By adopting a more open mindset and accepting other approaches, you open new perspectives. » — Juliette Cahen, former editorial manager at Médianes.
5. Forgive and show humility
Good management often stems from a culture of humility and trust. Starting by learning to say "I don't know" and acknowledging that a manager is not omniscient allows for better decisions. This creates an environment where mistakes are human, where everyone is invited to deepen their skills and expertise, and where reflection is more collaborative.
- Accepting mistakes: Present in the digital world through the role of the product manager, the concept of "rapid decision-making" is key to creating an environment where realizing and accepting mistakes are inherent to project development. This enables the manager to understand what didn't work in order to improve and adapt the strategy, and lets the managed employee know they have their manager's trust. By forgiving quickly, a culture of momentum can take hold and allows all teams to feel they're in the same boat, which reduces pressure and improves workplace well-being.
« The most important thing for you is to identify what type of leader you'll be working with, ideally during the hiring interview. The most effective way to discover this quickly is to ask questions about their past experiences, both successes and failures (clearly mention both). Ask what happened, what worked, and what they learned. If the person focuses on a nice story and talks about the joy of internal stakeholders, run away. If the person provides concrete examples of efforts, tests that didn't really work, and what they did afterwards, fight to get the job. » — Max Leroy, Vice President of Product at POLITICO Europe.
6. Share information in writing
Centralizing information on a single collaborative platform and making note-taking easier at each meeting through automatic transcription can save you valuable time and promote everyone's autonomy on a daily basis. But above all, by explaining the context and acting as a guide when entrusting work to a colleague, you'll give them the keys to succeed. By sharing in writing the instructions, deadline, tools, general context, priorities, and expected results, you make the task easier to complete in both the short and long term.
- Prioritize writing over meetings: Agenda, written summaries (Notion) and video (tl;dv): like many digital companies, Médianes is committed to an asynchronous culture that saves time and keeps people out of meetings. This culture goes hand in hand with tools and processes we want to be as clear as possible: advance written exchanges with agendas shared on collaborative documents, voice notes, explanatory videos. It's also a way to be inclusive internally by making room for everyone and empowering teams more. Follow our guide to organize (or not) a meeting.
- Create tutorials: Whether it's to understand how daily operations are organized, publish an article, or integrate a survey, each task has its guide and point person at Médianes. A way to visualize and understand who is responsible, to know what processes are used, and to avoid multiplying requests to maintain focused work time. These guides can also be designed for external use, particularly for recruitment or freelance proposals, as at StreetPress.
- Handing over the work: Let's now turn our attention to time off. How can we make sure everyone can take a break with peace of mind, without feeling like they're leaving a huge mess behind? How can we let people take time off without having to double their workload beforehand and arrive at vacation exhausted? On our end, we've made it a habit to create handover notes. In them, we list ongoing or upcoming tasks, deadlines, and contact details for people involved on these matters. This allows those taking over these tasks to understand what needs to be delivered and meet deadlines while the person is away.
- Share the same glossary: Depending on the services and individual journeys, we each have language specific to our professions and different definitions for the same words. To ensure good communication between teams and within a team, creating a shared glossary and an ortho-typographic charter makes exchanges easier. Product Glossary at the News Product Alliance, illustrated glossary of typography at Médianes, or article on words in AI at the New York Times—each field of expertise has its resource. A way to share a common language and never feel left out of the conversation.
To go further
- All resources published by Médianes on the topic of management are available in our section.
