Funding Print and Online News Media in France: Developments and Challenges

Abstract

Franck Rebillard studies the major changes and socio-political issues affecting the financial resources available to print and online media in France. In order to overcome its funding crisis, the news media have recently seen crowdsourcing platforms as an alternative source of financing. Such an approach, however, meant that a number of important aspects have been overlooked. First, the scale of crowdfunding remains quite small for both print and online media. Second, the importance of State assistance, which currently accounts for 15% of media revenues in France, is too often discounted. Lastly, the appearance of new sources of media financing calls into question the role of the State in supporting media pluralism. Google—a major beneficiary of the transfer of advertising budgets to oligopolistic Internet platforms—has invested millions of euros in supporting online media, while during the same time support from the French government has decreased accordingly.