It’s Le Monde’s World, We’re Just Living In It
/Name a major newspaper—anywhere in the world—and you will find a magazine. Or two. Or three. The New York Times is the obvious example of this. The Times of London is another obvious example. And now more and more legacy newspapers from around the world are publishing their magazines in English.
La Repubblica in Italy publishes D. And now France’s venerable Le Monde is out with M International, a glossy biannual that distills their weekly M magazine for an English-speaking audience.
Long called “the newspaper of reference” in France, Le Monde occupies an oversized space in the French media. When the Olympics returned to Paris, Le Monde decided to create an english version of their newspaper for the web. Then they decided to create the magazine—in English—something that not just added an extra piece of land to their media ecosystem, but one that pleased their advertisers as well.
We spoke to Louis Dreyfus, the CEO of Le Monde about the business case for English, how the magazines attract new readers to the newspaper, the power of print, and how AI is one of the reasons Le Monde can create in english in the first place.
