The media and the “next world”, with economist Julia Cagé

Audio 28:15

Julia Cagé at the Aix-en-Provence Economic Meetings, June 2019. RFI / David Baché

By: Steven Jambot Follow | Simon Decreuze Follow

The Media Workshop received Julia Cagé, professor at Sciences Po Paris, specializing in particular in the media economy. In 2015, she published at Seuil Sauver les Médias, a book with more than ever topical titles, while the coronavirus pandemic and containment measures are severely affecting the media industry.

Publicity

While the coronavirus crisis adds to the economic difficulties that the media have known for several years, the economist Julia Cagé does not hide her concern: "  I am afraid that there will be no more economic model to produce information at the local level.  "

In L'Atelier des Médias, she describes the current paradox: a sharp drop in advertising revenues and sales per issue due to containment measures and, at the same time, a very strong increase in the consultation of information in online, which has led to an increase in digital subscriptions to news media.

For Julia Cagé, "  information is a public good  " but that does not mean that it must be free. The cost must be borne in part by the citizens and, for example, the state must offer quality media subscriptions to people on low incomes.

The economist argues that there should be more citizen readers who finance press companies and journalists who are shareholders of their own media. In order for this "  good model  " - that is how it qualifies it - to be put in place, financial support from the State is needed, she explains.

Julia Cagé also gives her advice to those who would like to create a media these days: make a crowdfunding campaign to create a foundation (non-profit therefore) with the ambition to embark readers and journalists in an adventure.

But she also recalls that creating a new ad-hoc writing is very complicated. Also, the one who is also president of the Society of World Readers, would probably prefer "to  innovate from an existing media rather than create a media from nothing  ".

The urgency for the media is to do everything not to collapse due to the current crisis, concludes Julia Cagé.

► See also: Julia Cagé: the intellectual on the left that she wanted to be

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  • Economy
  • Economic crisis
  • Coronavirus
  • After Covid-19 to a new world?
  • Media
  • Journalism

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