“The climate emergency is a challenge for journalism”, according to the editorial director of the digital media on environmental issues

The “Les Échos” – “Le Parisien” group is launching “2050NOW”, a 100% digital media dedicated to the environment. “Journalists need to work with scientists,” explains the project’s editorial director, Vincent Giret.

Vincent Giret was the director of franceinfo until 2021 before taking charge of news at Radio France. He then joined the group in the summer of 2023 Les Echos – Le Parisien for a project that has just seen the light of day. This is an offer dedicated to the ecological transition, 2050NOW, of which he is the editorial director. The group is launching this digital media on environmental issues by adding an activity to support companies in their green transformation. A media that will operate without advertising and which will offer, on the one hand, free content in the form of awareness videos on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube aimed at young people. And on the other side, the media will offer paid content and services for businesses.

“The climate emergency is a total challenge for journalism. It is an objectively complicated subject. And if we want to have an impact, if we really want to create bonds of trust, we have to move up, we have to work differently, we have to work with scientists, engineers“, explains Vincent Giret. According to him, 14 million French people, or a third of the working population, think that the ecological transition concerns them in their personal and professional lives. “They are very eager for reliable information and acquired knowledge, they are as wary of greenwashing as of catastrophism“, he said.

A media that is not “militant”, but “engaged”

“We know well that the speed of the transition is not at the right pace“, continues Vincent Giret. And it is for this reason that 2050NOW responds to a “emergency”. “We are not an activist media in the activist sense of the term. On the other hand, we are committed and our uniqueness is that we are both as close as possible to science and as close as possible to business.”, he explains. The media has a scientific orientation committee, because“we must feed ourselves with what scientists, engineers, people who really know tell us“.

2050NOW is therefore also aimed at businesses, because they are “the driving force of ecological transformation, so we must encourage them, we must help them to accelerate, that’s the project”declares Vincent Giret. 2050NOW is therefore a media, but also “a house”, “a knowledge and acceleration center dedicated to businesses to accelerate the ecological transition“, he concludes.