“It’s going in the right direction, but it still remains insufficient and very fragile,” said Jean-Arnault Dérens, founder and editor-in-chief of Le Courrier des Balkans. For more than 25 years, this online newspaper, which prides itself on being one of the oldest digital-only publishers in the world, has offered day-after-day reports and analyses through its correspondents based in all Balkan countries. All of this, only in French.

“Being a French-speaking and online newspaper was not the initial idea, as we were thinking more of a paper newspaper. But circumstances made it happen, and in the end, I think it’s rather an opportunity than a handicap,” said Dérens, pointing out that there is more competition inside the English market and that many people have a connection to French due to the common bases in Latin languages.

Le Courrier des Balkans is set up as an NGO, which allows it to raise funds through subsidies, but also to generate income thanks to its subscribers. The website has a hard paywall, which requires a subscription to view the articles.

“Subscriptions represent 70 percent of our resources. We had a drop in the number of page views and traffic when we introduced it, but we compensated [lost income] with subscriptions. We are a niche media, so we have no goal of generating clicks but rather offering quality content.” The website regularly offers new content on the region, far from the media coverage of mainstream media. Contributors who live in the countries covered bring different ideas, voices, and angles daily, far from mainstream media that cover these countries only during breaking news.

Le Courrier d’Europe centrale is another online newspaper that is based on the same strategy. Launched in 2015 after having been a blog solely devoted to Hungarian news, it now covers all of Central Europe. It offers different articles, ranging from field reports or analyses, each time with the same mission, that of making people on the spot hear it, all in French. However, its future is very uncertain.

“We find ourselves in a bit of a trap. We put up a paywall a few years ago, and [maintaining] it costs a lot of time, especially for the administration. It’s a huge amount of work that eats up all the time and, if not a big jump in the number of subscribers and income. So after five or seven years of this, we blew down the paywall,” said Corentin Léotard, editor-in-chief of Le Courrier d’Europe centrale. Since the beginning of the year, all content is accessible for free.

Léotard explained that there is now quite strong competition in the region, which has had an impact on the subscription model, compared to before, when it was only them. “Producing a good report in Ukraine, which costs us a lot and which will be accessible to a few hundred people, is a bit heartbreaking. I think we have reached the end of a model,” said Léotard.

An important role

These two media have an even more particular importance as they cover regions where press freedom is not always guaranteed. We can think of Greece, which still ranks last in European Union countries in terms of press freedom according to the latest rankings from Reporters Without Borders (RSF), or Hungary, where journalism is under great pressure.

This media landscape had repercussions on Le Courrier d’Europe centrale. “On several occasions, we have been discredited in the national media in Hungary or made the subject of press caricatures. This is classic for anyone who is considered by the Orban regime as an enemy, even if we have no partisan color,” said Léotard.

Le Courrier des Balkans, for example, had to put pressure on Serbia, which refused to renew the visa of its correspondent there. “After six months, when we exhausted all legal procedures, we carried out a coordinated operation,” explained Jean-Arnault Dérens. “We made it public one morning with dispatches on Reuters and the AFP, and during a press conference by the Serbian Prime Minister on the economy, the first question asked was about our correspondent. She was taken by surprise, she didn’t know the case. At the beginning of the afternoon, our correspondent received his visa.”

Beyond that, Dérens also notes a deterioration of press freedom in the Balkans. “Our initial editorial goal was to be the voice of the independent media of the Balkans by translating some of their articles into French. Now we hardly do anymore because there are far fewer independent media compared to twenty years ago.”

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) notes that these two media play a crucial role in putting the international spotlight on countries where democracy and press freedom are challenged the most in Europe. “They provide trustworthy information about countries where local media struggle to do so due to strong political and economic pressures, such as Hungary, Greece, and Serbia,” said Pavol Szalai, Head of the EU-Balkans Desk of RSF. Adding that “Journalism is a public good, but it is not for free (…) Online subscription is one type of funding which allows for independence of any political and economic pressures, so common in the region.”

Even if its situation remains fragile, Le Courrier des Balkans continues to diversify its activities to generate more income, such as with conferences, consulting, or an online store. “We don’t want to take too many risks to continue over time,” said Dérens, who would also like to increase the remuneration of freelancers at some point. Conversely, Le Courrier d’Europe centrale is currently publishing very little new content and is evaluating different options to see if it’s able to survive.

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Unique small French media outlets from the Balkans and Central Europe struggle to survive