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Goodbye Google Docs, the benefits of donations to fund media and archives that vanish

Some newsrooms are betting on free and open-source tools to reduce the grip that Big Tech companies have on them. Also in this issue: the excesses of CNews on TikTok, stereotypes about donations, the history of Bondy Blog, and a web with gothic accents.

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This article was originally published in the "10 Links" newsletterMédianes, which is sent out two Mondays a month at 2 p.m. Click here to subscribe!
  1. INDÉPENDANCE (Médianes) — Si certaines rédactions ont choisi de quitter X ou les plateformes de Meta, qu’en est-il de leurs outils du quotidien ? Google Docs, Slack, Adobe ou Windows structurent leur travail et constituent souvent un véritable angle mort. Toutefois, certains médias ont misé sur des alternatives libres, open source ou développées en interne : un choix d’indépendance, de maîtrise et, aussi, un geste pour l’environnement.
  2. PLATEFORMES (Médianes x CJR) — En octobre, Meta a bloqué toute publicité jugée « politique, électorale ou sociale » en Europe, invoquant une réglementation européenne trop contraignante. Résultat : des médias comme La Croix, Vert ou XXI ont vu leurs campagnes d’abonnement et de dons soudainement suspendues. Une décision brutale qui rappelle l’urgence de diminuer la dépendance aux plateformes.

    P.S. This article, originally published in English in the Columbia Journalism Review, was written by Marine Doux, editorial director of Médianes, as part of her research work at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism.

  3. JOURNALISM (The Media Review) — Born in 2005 during the riots in the French suburbs, the Bondy Blog was originally an experiment by Swiss media outlet L'Hebdo. Now a fully-fledged newsroom, it is today recognized as a reference point, a stepping stone for young journalists, and a pioneer of free-access digital media.

    P.S. Sarah Ichou, director of the Bondy Blog, was a guest on the third season of Chemins, the podcast by Médianes.

  4. MODEL (The Audiencers) — Too activist, incompatible with young people or too risky for subscriptions: donations to fund media have long been the subject of misconceptions. Yet many newsrooms have made it a cornerstone of their model. Médianes was invited to the The Audiencers festival to debunk the clichés and reaffirm the benefits of donations.
  5. INTERNET (The Verge) — For a long time, the web has been an important space for expression and resources for trans people. But as their rights face serious threats and transphobic discourse proliferates, the web itself is in crisis: security, AI, platform dominance… So many challenges that The Verge explores in this (very excellent) investigation.
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ANNOUNCEMENT — A European Club of Independent Media? Médianes is considering how to develop Sphera, the network it coordinates in Europe. Share your thoughts!
  1. AI (CJR) — AI-powered browsers like Atlas (OpenAI) and Comet (Perplexity) are hitting the market and creating a new challenge for media outlets: capable of summarizing articles, they sometimes access paid content by bypassing paywalls and ignoring certain anti-bot protections.
  2. ETHICS (Arrêt sur images) — CNews's ethical breaches are no longer surprising anyone and are regularly addressed by ARCOM. But on TikTok, the channel throws off all constraints and goes even further, broadcasting sensationalist videos by condensing news briefs into just a few seconds, with no respect for basic journalism principles. TikTok or TV report, the standards must nonetheless be the same.
  3. ETHICS (Libération) — Funding a media outlet through sponsorship is not forbidden, but requires extreme vigilance. For example, Hugo Clément recently overlooked a few ethical principles by promoting a company "respectful of the environment" in a video dedicated to climate change. An opportunity to review certain rules on the subject.
  4. ARCHIVING (Nieman Lab) — The Wayback Machine, the go-to tool for web archiving, has recorded an 87% drop in saved homepage pages from media outlets in recent months. CNN, Kyiv Post, Le Monde… entire days have thus disappeared from the archives. A reminder that preserving online journalism and our digital memory cannot depend on a single player.

    P.S. Wondering why web archiving is essential? We explain why (and how to get involved).

  5. DESIGN (It's Nice That) — Medieval typefaces, dark colors, menacing castles: gothic aesthetics are everywhere, but it's about more than just style. Its return on the web may reflect collective anxiety in the face of an opaque and unsettling Internet; a form of visual defiance comparable to punk or grunge's stance against a milieu seen as oppressive.