French pro-am news website launches monthly print edition

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Rue89 , the pro-am news website launched in 2007 by a team of former Libération journalists, has launched its first print edition. Rue89 Le Mensuel , which translates as Rue89 the monthly, is the first foray into print for the formerly online-only title. The 100-page, microformat magazine will cost €3.90 per issue or €34 for a year's subscription.

Launched yesterday with a print run of 87,000 copies, the new title will be made up of stories from the Rue89 site adapted to the magazine format, but about 30 per cent of the print edition will be original material, founder Pierre Haski, told Journalism.co.uk.

"The idea is to replicate in print the spirit of the website: serendipity and an eclectic choice of stories written both by journalists and non-journalists, accompanied with selected comments from our web audience," he said.

The decision to launch a print edition was an editorial and commercial one, added Haski.

"We've decided to move to print to give our stories a second life. A large part of our 1.5 million-strong audience comes irregularly and therefore misses a large number of stories, which, although they remain freely available in archive, largely disappear once they leave the homepage," he said. "We've selected stories - less than 10 per cent of what we put online - which we feel deserve another reading experience. The rhythm of a monthly looks like a good complement to the flow of the web.

"The second reason is obviously economic diversification, with income from sales and advertising from print. We've had nine pages of advertising in the first issue, a good surprise as we had expected four." The French site, which experimented with a sister site in Quebec before closing the news operation after six months , secured a €1.1 million investment from five new investors in 2008 . But the new magazine launch has been self-funded by Rue89, said Haski.

"The investment is actually quite minimal as content is produced by our team (20 full-time staff and some freelance writers). We're counting first on the website and our community to promote it. There's no massive and costly promotion campaign," he said.

An external team, led by Frederic Allary, a former general manager of French weekly cultural magazine Les Inrocks, will be in charge of editing, printing, and distribution, while Rue89 will remain in control of the editorial content.

"They share the risk and the potential profits," said Haski.