Twelve years have passed since the creation of French Morning. It does not rejuvenate us! Over the years, your favorite news site has established itself as a reference for French people in the United States. Even if you read French Morning regularly, you often ask us how we work and what is our philosophy. The following text is given to all journalists who join our happy team. We decided to share it with you.
What is French Morning and what we are not
French Morning is the information site of French people from the United States, Montreal and London. We are not a blog. We consider ourselves more like "French village gazette" in every city where we are located (New York, LA, San Francisco, Texas, Miami and Washington DC). The site, independent of the public authorities (embassy, consulate …), was founded in 2007 by Emmanuel Saint-Martin, a former journalist of the Point and from France 24. Our free newsletters are sent at different times of the week: New York (Monday and Thursday), Washington (Tuesday), Los Angeles and Miami (Wednesday), Texas and San Francisco (Thursday).
Our identity, our good practices
– The topics we cover do not depend on our advertisers, but on their journalistic value. They are, for the most part, determined at a weekly editorial conference that brings together our journalists around the world.
– At French Morning, the editorial team (journalists team) is separated from our sales team. In other words, our journalists are not there to sell advertising. Besides, they do not know the price of advertising. This has been the case since the beginning of French Morning. In the same way, our beloved salespeople do not know the topics we are working on. We consider that this "wall of China" between writing and commercial activities is a guarantee of seriousness and integrity.
– The editorial staff is largely composed of professional journalists. All information that appears on French Morning must meet journalistic standards (exact and verified information, "5W" rule – where, who, how, why, when …).
– The articles are not re-read by anyone outside the editorial staff before publication. Only "partner" or "sponsored" articles are re-read by advertisers who have paid for their publication. These articles are clearly identified as such at the beginning and end of the text with the mention "partner article" by transparency for our readers. In the case of editorial articles, we sometimes have quotations read again at the request of the interviewee.
– We do not do interviews by e-mail. We meet the people we interview whenever possible.
Content of articles
French Morning publishes three types of articles:
– news: we cover the news of the local French community in different fields (news and politics, business, art, culture, education, styles).
– city guide: we are also a guide with good addresses and announcements of events (called "agendas") interesting for our readership (and not necessarily related to the French or French community)
– practical life: practical articles on the installation (schools, health, finance, real estate …)
Your
French Morning is a serious news media that does not take itself seriously. We adopt an informative but casual tone, with puns, nice picks and some self-mockery. The writing must remain demanding. We only write very rarely in the first person. We also avoid some familiarity by always quoting the names of the interviewees (except when they ask us not to be identified to be able to give their testimony) and avoiding the exclamation points.
