A party to bury 2023 and count on a rebound in 2024. Employees of 20 minutes met on Monday, January 8, for a drink together to mark the New Year, sharing hopes and anxieties. The week is important for the free media: the reorganization of its editorial staff took effect on Wednesday January 10. Specialized journalists are called upon to retain their expertise but to be more flexible. The editorial staff will now be divided into three divisions: hot news, articles “services” with journalistic angles “ originals », and videos. Different formats and temporalities which aim to address the widest possible audience. If some journalists fear the end of specializations, others welcome the “decompartmentalization” sections.
These changes come as the media has gone through a delicate year in 2023, even if management refuses to give precise figures. The paper version of 20 minutes – distributed in eight French metropolises on Monday, Wednesday and Friday – saw its distribution continue its downward trend. Also, its digital audiences have decreased compared to 2022, a record year in terms of attendance with the presidential campaign and the start of the war in Ukraine. They were notably weighed down by the less favorable algorithms of Google Discover and social networks. Finally, the free media bore the brunt of a sluggish advertising market in the first three quarters of the year as it is entirely financed by advertisers.
Since the Covid crisis in 2020, the company has been in the red for years and 2023 is no exception. The job protection plan (PSE) launched in spring 2022, which caused the departure of around fifteen journalists, did not stop the vicious circle. “A deficit which increases over a post-PSE year particularly worries us”, alarms Gilles Durand, elected to the Social and Economic Committee (CSE) of the National Union of Journalists.
The new management, embodied by its general director Ronan Dubois and its editorial director Fanny Annoot-Oualia, both of whom arrived in 2023, are mobilizing to provoke a rebound. The first, Ronan Dubois, renegotiated contracts with various suppliers and scrutinized expenses in search of savings. “We remain at constant staff numbers, but not necessarily position for position”, specifies Mr. Dubois, while five positions have not been replaced recently according to our information. The second, Fanny Annoot-Oualia, wants to reaffirm an editorial identity “sassy” to distinguish themselves from competitors.
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