For nearly 10 years, Nice Premium has established itself in the local web landscape with the sole ambition of providing information about what is happening in Nice and its surroundings. It was a desire, a challenge taken on by two keyboard enthusiasts: one to design platforms and the other to manage the content. Thus, the Nice Premium you are reading right now was born.
The early days of the adventure were rather enjoyable, even if the media landscape of the time didn’t always view it favorably. Then, as the years passed, and thanks especially to search engine indexing, the pages of Nice Premium began to make a name for themselves. Positively, with many partners and friends joining the adventure, and less positively with incidents such as custody or a search. During this period, we heard many outlandish stories, like the alleged financing of NP by numerous local personalities, hidden links with press groups or political parties, and certain affiliations to one allegiance or another. In short, fantasies and pure inventions were plentiful, though today we remember them with some fondness.
The main mistake in this matter is both shooting down the Mediapart ambulance and using it as a self-service medium for slander. The renewed demonization of online press and those who produce it in France and regions will therefore rekindle these tensions and mistrust among men and women doing the same job, who took quite a long time to recognize it. Does publishing one’s writings on paper rather than online make one a better journalist?
No, online press has never been and will never be the gravedigger of print media, much to the dismay of those who maintain this fantasy to defend an ideology to be neatly stowed away.
At a time when Alpes-Maritimes MP Muriel Marland Militello (who should be aware that France ranks a not-so-glorious 43rd in the press freedom ranking by Reporters Without Borders) wants to “regulate” the press and the journalism profession, it would be rather timely for the entire French press to stand together a little before getting “framed.” Therefore, it is time to uphold an intellectual independence that puts an end to too many stances, concave or convex, depending on interests and circumstances. Because, as George Orwell reminds us, press freedom is above all the freedom to tell people what they do not want to read!
