In 2008, when most publishers hadn’t even considered putting up a paywall, Mediapart launched with a model that went against the grain.
Since its inception, the digital-only publisher has relied on subscription revenue to fund its brand of investigative journalism, making it one of the first French online news platforms to adopt a fully paid model.
“It was a crazy bet. A lot of experts said it would never work,” said Cécile Sourd, CEO of Mediapart.
Fast forward to today, and Mediapart stands out as a success story in the French news media landscape. Last year, it had 233,000 paying readers, and the company has grown to employ more than 150 people.
Mediapart has also established itself as a formidable investigative unit. Its revelations have led to numerous scandals that have shaken the worlds of French politics and business.
Speaking at our World News Media Congress in Krakow, Sourd explained how Mediapart has built its success on the core value of radical independence and how the publisher fosters deep audience engagement.
Their uncompromising, fully reader-funded model might not work as a template that other publishers can copy exactly, but the takeaway from Mediapart’s journey is that “radical choices, core choices about model, revenue, or journalism, can have real success,” she said.
A business built on independence
Driven by a commitment to independence, Mediapart’s founders aimed to create a model where commercial interests could not compromise their journalism.
“We think that to truly be editorially independent, we have to be 100% financially independent,” Sourd said.
This thinking led to bold strategic decisions:
No ads: To maintain editorial independence, Mediapart does not feature any advertising. Instead, it relies entirely on its readers for revenue. “How are you going to investigate big companies if you rely on the money that they will give you for advertising?” Sourd said.
No public subsidies: Similarly, Mediapart does not accept public subsidies, unlike most media outlets in France. “We’ve launched some very big scandals about ministers and politicians. How are you going to write about this if you depend on public subsidies to pay your salaries?” she said.
No shareholders: Mediapart has never had remunerated shareholders. “We’ve never had a board who put money in the business asking for results to get money back,” she said. (Mediapart changed its ownership structure in 2019 to a non-profit model that aims to guarantee editorial independence in perpetuity – more on that shortly.)
No money from big tech: Not wanting to rely on funding from tech firms, Mediapart has never made financial agreements with platforms.
Despite these apparent restrictions, Mediapart has been profitable for the last 14 years. In 2024, it generated almost €25 million in revenue, 99% of which came from subscribers.
“So it’s a winning model so far, and we never intend to change anything about it because it’s very fundamental to our work,” Sourd said.
By the end of 2024, Mediapart had 233,277 subscribers. Chart source.
Non-profit trust: Ensuring long-term financial independence
The founders of Mediapart also wanted to ensure that its ownership model would guarantee its independence in perpetuity.
Having created Mediapart as a for-profit company, they took inspiration from The Scott Trust, the owner of The Guardian in the UK, and in 2019 established the non-profit trust “Fonds pour une Presse Libre” (“Fund for a free press”).
The fund has two objectives: to collect donations and distribute funding to journalistic projects, and to ensure the long-term independence of Mediapart as its owner.
Read more: Mediapart transforms B2B from revenue niche to growth lever
Sourd said that the non-profit ownership structure “frees us from corporate ownership or external control in the future,” and guarantees long-lasting financial independence.
“We have no bank loan at all. We self-finance all our investments. Every year, the money we earn, we reinvest either on human resources, creating jobs or increasing salaries, or in tech development,” she said.
“We are also in the process of building financial reserves, because we are realistic. Just because Mediapart is working now doesn’t mean that it will be working in a few years. And when the harder times come, we want to be able to rely on ourselves to finance our developments and get back on track.”
Building trust as a participative media
For a media outlet that is fully reader-funded, developing a relationship with its audience that is based on trust is obviously crucial.
Mediapart builds this by being “a participative media,” Sourd said, which among other things means that they provide a blogging platform for subscribers. Every day, their journalists scour the blogs and feature the most interesting content on the homepage.
“It doesn’t mean that everyone is a journalist,” she said.
“But it means that for us, journalism’s democratic role is to create debate, to create exchange of ideas, and to stimulate reflection. And that’s a very important part that has created a direct link with the audience.”
Sourd also highlighted an example of a specific participatory project that builds on Mediapart’s long-running investigations into whether the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy received campaign funds from the late Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi.
Mediapart used crowdfunding to finance a documentary about the topic that is extremely complex but one that “might be one of the biggest scandals of the Fifth Republic,” Sourd said.
They collected more than €500,000 from 10,000 donors within a month, making their crowdfunding campaign the most successful one ever for a documentary in France.
When the film was released in January this year, it was a huge success for a documentary, with 150,000 people seeing it in cinemas. There were also more than 100 debates at the film’s screenings, with “rooms always full” and the public asking “many, many questions; people being very interested in this story,” Sourd said.
The documentary’s success shows that “when you connect with people and make them participate in journalism and its impact, you have people wanting to give money” and engage with the journalism, she said.
“That shows us that our participative core value actually works.”
Transparency in action
Mediapart also builds trust with its audience through its dedication to transparency.
“We’re not going to ask powerful people to be accountable if we aren’t transparent ourselves,” said Sourd.
For instance, Mediapart publishes and holds a press conference about its annual results every year. It also publishes declarations of interest from all its journalists, and its articles include an infobox with details on how the article was sourced.
Podcasts and a weekly Twitch chat give audiences a further look behind the scenes of their investigations. During these chats, where journalists and non-journalist staff talk about their work and answer audience questions.
Sourd also highlighted Mediapart’s client service: “We have real people answering the phone and responding to emails, which is getting quite rare. And we have people reading all the emails we get. Sometimes we launch stories based on what comes in via email.”
Betting on collaborative culture
Having grown over the years, Mediapart’s team now consists of 151 employees. About half of them are journalists.
“Of course, you need good journalists to do a good newspaper. But you also need so many other roles. We really try to keep that half-and-half proportion,” Sourd said.
The publisher works hard to build a sense of shared culture among the entire team, regardless of their roles. Everyone works together in an open-plan office and is welcome to the daily editorial meeting, where non-journalists can also contribute ideas.
Sourd said Mediapart’s journalism is guided by a firm commitment to delivering facts that allow it to have an impact. Indeed, Mediapart published its first impact report this year.
“It’s important for us to show the social value of journalism,” she said
“We are really strong believers that high-quality journalism gives people power to act. We don’t want to tell them what to do. We just want to tell them what the facts are; how we understand them.”
Attracting younger audiences with video, diversity
Like all news publishers, Mediapart is also seeking to appeal to a younger audience. Video plays a key role: while articles are behind a paywall, most of the video content is freely available, which helps to attract new audiences, especially younger ones.
Livestreamed chats with Mediapart’s staff on the Twitch platform also engage younger people, as do events and podcasts. Mediapart has also built connections with universities and libraries, and offers a special subscription fee to under-25s.
Crucially, they have focused on hiring younger journalists from diverse backgrounds, “because they bring new ideas and new subjects, and we want to resemble the society we claim to talk to,” Sourd said.
“When you put on video young journalists who come from diverse backgrounds, it creates identification. So we are also working hard on becoming a younger newsroom.”
This thinking has extended to Mediapart’s leadership: wanting to ensure a successful transition of leadership in the future, the company’s founders “hired and trained a new generation of people to lead the company,” Sourd said.
“If you want to have a successful business, you also have to think about what’s coming next and prepare the things to come,” she said.
Last year marked an important milestone in the leadership transition: Edwy Plenel, the renowned journalist and largely public face of Mediapart, stepped down as president and publishing editor, handing over to Carine Fouteau.
“I’m very proud to tell you that today the four leaders of Mediapart are all women,” Sourd said.
“That means something. That says something about who we are.”
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