© Illustration by Aurélie Garnier
At the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Marseille (3 June 2026), Le Monde’s Chief Digital Officer Lou Grasser sat down with YouTube’s VP for EMEA, Pedro Pina, for a fireside chat moderated by Marion Ranchet (Streaming Made Easy). The session, “Transforming Journalism on YouTube,” looked at how a reference newspaper is going video-first without becoming a TV channel. Le Monde now does 4 million video views a day. Here is what they shared.
Key takeaways to copy & share
> Le Monde does 4 million video views a day against 6 million site visits. Followers are only 25% of that traffic, so YouTube works as a discovery engine rather than a loyalty channel > Views grew 25% in 2025, driven by long formats. The deliberate choice was to invest in the newsroom and in staff journalists on camera, not a standalone TV channel or external creators > YouTube reports 15 billion news views a year, and its revenue share leaves publishers with more than half of what they monetise on the platform > YouTube is building paywall integration with publishers' own subscription systems, with Le Monde as a pilot partner. Today there is no way to gate video on the platform at all > YouTube's advice: be personality-driven and direct to camera, don't copy-paste a TV format, and hire someone with real channel-management experience to train the in-house team
Why Le Monde invests in YouTube
