"The Disappearance", good news in the form of epistolary media

The letter-writing medium "The Disappearance" is the bet to send letters-reports (in paper) from the disappearance front to subscribers who receive them every two weeks directly in their letterbox.

© The Disappearance / Christelle Perrin

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

5 mins

To ward off the announced apocalypse, this newspaper will be born in January 2022 under the name "La Disparition".

In the digital age, Annabelle Perrin and François de Monès, two young journalists in their thirties living in Marseille, have just launched number zero of this medium dedicated to letter-writing journalism.

Newsletters sent from the disappearance front to subscribers receiving them every two weeks in their real mailbox.

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Interview with co-founder and editor-in-chief Annabelle Perrin during the presentation of

La Disparition

at the annual conference of New Practices in Journalism at Sciences-Po.

RFI

: Why this title

La Disparition

?

Annabelle Perrin

:

It's called

La Disparition

, because we chronicle the ongoing disappearances in our current world.

We can talk about the disappearance of trees, neighborhoods, certain public services in France… The first letters will be sent to our subscribers in January, every two weeks.

You want to rediscover and reconcile the old journalistic requirement with a new proximity to readers.

Why did you choose the form of a letter of ten pages sent by post and not of a newsletter by email or a blog on the Internet

?

We wanted to reinvent our relationship with the letterbox and to re-enchant it.

Today, when we go to collect our mail, in general it is only invoices or advertisements ... We said to ourselves that it would be pleasant to be surprised by a story from the journalist who addresses us in the first person in telling us a story.

When you express your desire to reclaim land, what land are you talking about

?

It's a reconquest of the ground, because we try to embody the reports as much as possible.

All letters begin with something like: " 

To you who read me

 ".

We want the reader to really feel with the journalist in the field.

We also want the journalist who sees with his own eyes what he sees in the field, to say to himself: I am writing to my mother, to my best friend or to someone I know.

I think for the journalist there, it's a new way of looking and writing, and for the reader, it's also a new way of reading information.

The first readers, how did they react

?

We made a letter zero, a kind of prototype. She tells the story of the announced disappearance of the [3.5 million] truck drivers in the United States, threatened by “smart” Amazon trucks that can drive themselves without a driver. The journalist was there and met these truck drivers, those who were on strike… He spent a lot of time with them in the cabins. Some of our readers have written to us, at the postal address of

La Disparition

in Marseille [smile], saying: “ 

It's great, because it made me want to take up my pen again. I wanted to take some paper and say

: thank you for the time I spent reading this. And I also wanted to answer, to start a new correspondence, to write ...

 There was a time, when we were young, when we had correspondents abroad, a German friend, etc.

And there, it's almost the same.

He is not a correspondent, but he is a journalist.

Annabelle Perrin, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of "La Disparition", epistolary journalism media.

© Siegfried Forster / RFI

In

 the digital age and 5G, you stress that this is not a nostalgic project, but full of the future, talking about disappearances suffered, but also others, desired ...

Some might, for example, want nuclear power to disappear, others for patriarchy ... There are also ongoing disappearances which are beneficial.

One of our journalists recounts the disappearance of sleeping sickness.

It was a disease especially in Africa, caused by the tsetse fly.

Recently, thanks to the vaccine, thanks to medicine, she has [almost] disappeared.

The journalist in the field tells the story of the last sick.

That is a desirable disappearance that has taken place.

How is

The Disappearance

in tune with our Covid era

?

To the ecological, social and democratic crisis has been added a new crisis, the health crisis. For the first time, we are going through so many crises and disruptive upheavals. I sincerely believe that we are at a crossroads and that to speak of disappearances is to face new upheavals. Because behind each disappearance, there are political decisions that have been taken, but also to be taken. We have to face them. We have to look at the situation as it is today. For that, I believe that

The Disappearance

is in agreement with the world in which one lives, a world close to the precipice, but not yet in the hole.

La Disparition

, an epistolary medium, will be sent from January 2022 every two weeks to subscribers for a price of 11 euros per month.

Presales are open in the form of crowdfunding on the KissKissBankBank platform.

Inside the envelope will also be: a postcard related to the subject, a comic strip, crosswords ...

► Among the first

planned

letters-reports of

La Disparition

: a story by Jean D'Amérique, RFI Théâtre 2021 prize, which will tell the story of the disappearance of his childhood toys in Haiti.

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