INTERVIEW
A guest on Philippe Vandel's Culture Médias, Eric Fottorino, founder and editor of the quarterly magazine Zadig , came to present the fourth issue of his magazine. The opportunity to come back on his risky bet at the time when the paper press is less and less profitable.
"All France telling France"
It's written above the title: "All France telling France". This is the mission of the journal Zadig . In 2017, after the election of Emmanuel Macron and well before the beginning of the movement of yellow vests, Eric Fottorino, former director of the World , notes that the traditional press does not speak enough of "all France". "There was this idea that we did not understand our country, that we were too far away," he says. The first issue of Zadig will be released in March 2019.
"The great photographer Robert Capa used to say: 'When a photo is bad, it's because we're not close enough.' And it's the same for a newspaper, we have to get closer," says the founder of the weekly paper The 1 and the "mook" [contraction of "book", book, and magazine] America . "France is being plowed with reporters, writers, researchers, and draughtsmen, which means that we are taking France by hand, all France, including the overseas."
A counter-current of "speed as a virtue"
To create its magazine without advertising, the team had bet on crowdfunding and collected 275,000 euros while the bar was set at 100,000 euros. With an average of 35,000 copies sold per issue, Eric Fottorino assures him, "the second year [of Zadig's existence] is assured".
The long time is also the hallmark of Zadig . Its founder remarks: "today we have set speed as a virtue and we have not dug enough what is our country". In this fourth issue devoted to religions and entitled "Happy as god (x) in France", for his report on Pentecostalism, a religion that rises in France, the reporter has completely immersed. "She did not stay three hours but several weeks," notes Eric Fottorino.