French pro-am news website, Rue89 forays into print from online

Posted by Savita Sauvin on June 21, 2010 at 3:24 PM

Rue89, the French pro-am news website launched its first monthly print edition, Rue89 Le Mensuel, last week, that translates as Rue89 the monthly, Journalism.co.uk reported.

While the decision to go from online to print was an editorial and commercial one, according to founder Pierre Haski, this move aims to "replicate in print the spirit of the website: serendipity and an eclectic choice of stories written both by journalists and non-journalists, accompanied with selected comments from our web audience."

The former online-only title will now be available on print as a 100-page, micro format magazine costing €3.90 per issue and €34 for an annual subscription. The magazine will select 10 percent of its online published content that deserve another reading experience and give stories a second life, while creating a new revenue stream from sales and advertising on print.

Having launched in 2007 by a former team of Liberation journalists, this news site secured €1.1 million investment from five new investors in 2008 before closing the news operations of its sister site in Quebec. The launch of this magazine has been self-funded, according to Haski. He said, "The investment is actually quite minimal as content is produced by our team (20 full-time staff and some freelance writers). We're counting first on the website and our community to promote it. There's no massive and costly promotion campaign."

While the news site will continue to control editorial content, the printing, editing and distribution activities will be managed by an external team led by Frederic Allary, former general manager of French weekly cultural magazine Les Inrocks. The monthly magazine will carry a print run of 87,000 copies.