“Since 1913, Science and Life ensured quality science journalism for wide audiences. How to accept his disappearance without a tear and a cry of rage? “, calls on Twitter the mathematician and deputy Cédric Villani. The 2010 Fields Medal winner thus shows his support for the magazine’s editorial staff, in open conflict since the start of the school year with its shareholder Reworld Media, which has taken control of the magazine’s website.
A collective departure envisaged
“There are press releases, plagiarism, sometimes even information that we have denied. It damages our image ”, a journalist alarmed, her throat tied. “We tried dialogue, strike, threats… but the management is rolling out its strategy without listening to our warnings. We feel disarmed, left to ourselves, it is no longer tenable ”, another continues. Out, the last twelve “Press cards” in office challenged the ministries of culture, research and the Élysée. And do not rule out a collective departure.
What is happening in the popular science magazine, more than a century old, very profitable (two million euros in profit, according to Arrêt sur images), bought each month by 185,000 readers in France? Sixteen months ago Science and Life became, along with the other titles of Mondadori France, the property of Reworld Media, a French group with dazzling growth, specialized in the digital conversion of press titles (read below). Invited by The cross to explain its strategy, the group did not follow up.
Its reputation for organizing a porosity between editorial and advertising empties the titles taken from some journalists. Their work is then entrusted to external agencies or “content managers”, including internally trained students.
“I was unable to complete my mission”
The remaining journalists (12 out of 30) from Science in Life they knew it. But they wanted to believe it would be different. Reworld Media had ensured that they maintained a high level of quality and respected their ethics. The title was their “ nugget “. “I bet that Reworld Media, with its digital competence, could be a good thing”, remembers Hervé Poirier, the former editor-in-chief, who left in October, after twenty-one years in the house. “I supported their choice to create a paid site without advertising. But I was not able to complete my mission to reorganize the editorial staff for this purpose. The request to lose control of the site was unacceptable. “
→ TO (RE) READ. Mondadori employees warn against takeover by Reworld Media
Since his departure, the two journalists who worked for the Web have joined the paper editorial staff, which is understaffed. And articles on the site are written from another entity, in Boulogne, by “content managers”, with a target of around fifty articles per week. “The basic difference is that we think that the time for reflection and the verification by our own filter of the smallest information nourishes the quality and the relationship of trust with the reader, while they are in the search of a capture attention “, summarizes Hervé Poirier.
” AT Science and Life, he continues in the past tense, we pretended to put the common thing on the table, from which an opinion can be formed. We were trying to be a common good. We thought in this sense to have a social and political utility, especially at this time. This tacit contract with our readers will gradually deteriorate. “
The “everything for everything” strategy
“Reworld and this publication are universes that cannot meet, adds sociologist Jean-Marie Charon. The popularization of science is a very particular field, which requires know-how, a methodology that had accumulated Science and Life over the long term. A company like Reworld, which develops its magazines around the audience, advertising and events, is unable to integrate such a structure. “ The researcher was even ” surprised “ that Reworld Media does not transfer this title. Especially since buyers are interested.
→ ANALYSIS. Journalism questions the treatment of science
This is the whole issue of the “everything for everything” strategy of the editorial staff, which hopes that the public authorities will exert pressure on the group to give in. Science and Life. They have the support of economist Julia Cagé and her association Un bout du monde. Since Thursday, she has gathered a collective under the hashtag #SauvonsScienceEtVie which informs of the situation with videos on social networks and “Carries the message that there are alternatives and that public intervention is legitimate so as not to let a shareholder destroy an essential information medium”.
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Route of a century-old magazine
Launched on 1is April 1913 by Paul Dupuy, son of the daily director The Little Parisian, under the name of Science and Life, the popular science magazine was bought in 2003 by the British company Emap.
Six years later, in 2009, it is sold to the French subsidiary of the Italian group Mondadori, alongside consumer magazines (Biba, Closer, Grazzia, Auto Moto, Télé Poche, Us Two…)
The Reworld Media group, created in 2012 by Pascal Chevalier and specialized in the digital conversion of press brands (Marie Claire, Be…), acquired it at the end of 2018 with the other titles of Mondadori. The group is in good financial health and employs 970 people in 12 countries. He recently released the magazines Dr Good ! (with Michel Cymes), Heritage Mission (with Stéphane Bern) or Gueuleton.
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