Since August 28, 2023, Jérôme Chapuis has joined franceinfo. He takes charge of the morning show and co-presents “8.30 franceinfo” alongside Salhia Brakhlia, from Monday to Thursday.
The new presenter of the franceinfo morning show arouses the interest of listeners. Jérôme Chapuis is the guest of Emmanuel Daviet, mediator for Radio France.
Emmanuelle Daviet: A listener would like to know what are your main responsibilities as morning presenter, in a 24-hour news channel?
Jérôme Chapuis: So the first responsibility is to have speech that is adjusted live, to systematically be in the right posture, particularly in interviews. But not only. And then, there is another responsibility, but which is more collective. This involves preparing in advance, and in particular in the phase which really precedes the broadcast, in the last two or three hours before the broadcast, with the entire team, the different contents.
In our jargon, a bit like in the cinema, we say that we have the “final cut”, the last cut on a work that has often been prepared 24 hours in advance. We have editorial conferences regularly. We generally plan, several hours in advance, and even a day in advance, the topics that will be covered in the morning. But we, until the last moment, depending on current events, can modify it. And that is also a responsibility.
And that assumes that you arrive at the editorial office at what time?
So for my part, at the moment, I arrive around 2:30 a.m./3 a.m., and in any case, there is an imponderable. This is because at 4:10 a.m. precisely, the morning team meets for an editorial conference in which we set what we call our dominant news: what should we highlight in our information hierarchy? And then, we fill the newspapers with the entire morning team and the editors-in-chief, who are responsible for supervising.
We continue with this question from a listener: “How do you manage the challenge of staying informed on a variety of topics to provide listeners with comprehensive and balanced news coverage?”
When you are a journalist, you are interested in everything, and you are first interested in what you don’t know. This could be one of the definitions of journalism. We are interested in what we do not know, and in what is happening. And so, it’s first and foremost a question of passion. When I decided to become a journalist, it was first and foremost because I had a passion for the event, for what was happening. So, in a way, it’s natural. Afterwards, we are like everyone else, maybe even more than everyone else. We can be subject to what we call information fatigue. So, from time to time, you have to be a little more proactive in going and reading the newspapers. But what is certain is that one of the first things we do when we arrive is to go back through the dispatches, to look at the morning press which comes out the evening before.
And then during the day, I take a little nap in the morning, I go read the newspaper The world at the beginning of the afternoon, to see what our colleagues’ choices are. There is constant monitoring work, but there is also something which is very important, which is that journalism is a team sport. And so if there is something that I have not seen, there will always be someone in the editorial office who will be there to put their finger on the event, which I could possibly have overlooked.
A listener who clearly knows your background well writes: “You have worked in private media, in radio, in the written press. You are now in a public media. In your opinion, what distinguishes the exercise of the profession of journalist between a private media and a public media ?”
The first thing we can say is that we are very lucky in France to have an ecosystem in which there are private media and a strong public service. And it’s very important that we have this pluralism. That’s the first thing. Then, there is a particular responsibility, undoubtedly, that falls to public service journalists.
And it’s true that when we arrive here at Radio France, there is something quite impressive in this great House with many journalists, radio professionals, it has existed for more than 60 years now, Just 60 years old, and we have this particular responsibility to be at the right distance, to get everyone talking. And when I say at the right distance, I think that there too, this is perhaps one of the definitions of journalism, it is to be able to put events at the right distance, to always prioritize them well and to really give everyone a voice.
Jérôme Chapuis on franceinfo the star is the news. How do you plan to implement your own style and editorial approach in the morning?
I think it should happen very naturally. At the start, we are in a collective with a mechanism that is very well oiled: franceInfo. But obviously, I’m talking about where I am. My conception of journalism is to be at the right distance, and it is to be an enlightened contradictor, in the sense that we come with what we know, but also with what we do not know. necessarily. We come to teach the listener things, to learn things ourselves about situations that are unfolding. So there is a form of humility that we must have, and at the same time, we must embody the information. You have to put a little of yourself into it.
We end with this message from a listener who would like to know what has surprised you the most since your arrival at franceinfo, which is a large editorial team with very precise mechanics?
That’s exactly it: it’s the mechanics that are extraordinary. For 37 years, in this radio, there has been something of a watchmaking nature. I said team sport to refer to journalism in general, but here, everyone knows exactly where they should be, what they have to do. Yes, I’ve been in charge of this morning for a few days now, and I immediately saw who should do what. Everything was sorted out perfectly. It’s extremely rigorous, and again, it’s a little impressive, when you arrive. But there is also something quite reassuring about it, because we really become part of a collective, which is very powerful and very strong.