Mediapart

Description

Mediapart is a French general-news daily, independent of political and business power and participatory in nature. It launched in March 2008 with a subscription-based economic model. It has no shareholders able to buy control, carries no advertising, and receives no public subsidies or private grants. It finances itself entirely through reader subscriptions.

In 2019 it made this independence permanent by creating the Fonds pour une presse libre, a non-profit endowment fund that owns Mediapart’s capital. This makes the newspaper permanently non-transferable and unbuyable. Mediapart’s stated mission is to investigate and reveal what is denied, hidden or ignored, holding powerful people and institutions accountable and giving the public information needed to exercise democratic oversight.

It reports on political parties across the spectrum, multinational companies, unions, NGOs and public figures. It describes itself as committed to progressive values of equality and solidarity, while not aligning with any political party or organisation. The newsroom is staffed by more than 130 permanent employees plus around fifty regular freelance contributors, correspondents and artists in France and abroad. It is organised into desks covering international affairs, politics, economy, investigations, society and the environment, alongside a documentary and video unit.

Readers who are subscribers can also publish their own contributions in a participatory space called Le Club. The organisation publishes its accounts, activity report and audience figures each year. It reports more than 6,500 investigations since launch, over 257,000 subscribers, and about 4.5 million unique monthly visitors, making it the third largest French general-news daily.

Its investigations over the years have included the Karachi affair, the Bettencourt and Cahuzac cases, the Takieddine documents, the Football Leaks, and the Benalla affair. It is legally structured as the Société Éditrice de Mediapart, registered in Paris.