It would like to be able to celebrate its twenty years of existence next year, but the drop in subsidies allocated to it until now is compromising its existence. The Bondy Blog, created in 2005, after the deaths of Zyed and Bouna in Aulnay-sous-Bois and the days of violence that followed in the suburbs, finds itself in a more precarious economic situation than ever, to the point that it could have to close, according to its director, Sarah Ichou. A call for donations was therefore launched via its website.
Online media, access to which is completely free and without advertising, the Bondy Blog is an association which has always existed largely thanks to subsidies. “We were born out of an emergency, explains Sarah Ichou, the question of our financial resources has always been asked. But here we have reached a stage where we say to ourselves that it is complicated to do with even less“. The site is powered by the work of two employees, including the director, and several dozen contributors, more or less regular, paid fifty euros per article. Weekly meetings take place in premises lent by the Bondy town hall .
Dozens of blogger-collaborators
Sarah Ichou insists on the diversity of the team: “Our editorial team is open, varied, the profiles of our authors are very different from each other, we have journalism students, students in general, employees, teachers… At the Bondy Blog, they do the work of journalists . There is a lot of support work to get there, but this is what allows us to tell different stories.“Being the voice of working-class neighborhoods is their mission.
While it recognizes progress in terms of diversity in the media since 2005 (notably with the arrival in editorial offices such as Mediapart or Libé of journalists trained at the Bondy Blog), the director believes that the work is not finished : “We still do not consider residents of working-class neighborhoods as citizens who could be consulted on any subject. We come there for subjects that correspond to what we expect in certain editorial offices when we talk about working-class neighborhoods. At the time of the riots, in 2023, we benefited from enormous media coverage, but after, before… We are in a context of economic crisis, why, instead of going to extend their microphone to the Aligre market ( Paris, 12th), journalists would not go to the Saint-Denis market? Better representation of working-class neighborhoods would include things like this“.
