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.
> 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
Lou Grasser reminded the room that Le Monde has been investing in platforms for more than 15 years, with one conviction: offer free content to younger audiences and bring them toward subscription. Le Monde now counts 700,000 subscribers, 90% of them digital. On YouTube specifically, the audience wants ambitious, long formats. In 2025, total views grew 25%, pulled up by long pieces (Charlie Hebdo, the 13 November attacks, the anniversary of Hiroshima). One telling number: followers represent only 25% of total views, so the platform remains a discovery machine rather than a loyalty channel.
“We’re often asked why Le Monde doesn’t invest in a TV channel. At Le Monde, we’d rather invest in the newsroom and in innovative video formats than in something with no direct return on investment.”
Lou Grasser, CDO, Le Monde
Le Monde does 4 million video views a day, against 6 million daily site visits. Much of the video work relies on OSINT (open source intelligence). The long-term goal: make Le Monde a reference for explainers and long formats, while gaining reach through short formats for discoverability.
Pedro Pina: YouTube’s case for news
Pedro Pina rejected the “Death Star” metaphor raised at the open: “YouTube wants this space to flourish, not destroy it.” He shared a few figures and points: 15 billion news views on YouTube last year, with news consumption growing steadily; Gen Z consume a lot of news, contrary to the cliché, and are not limited to short formats or mobile, since the connected TV is a major use. The revenue share leaves the publisher more than half of what it monetises. The moderation noted a recent partnership with France Télévisions for 20,000 hours of news a year on the platform.
On shifting habits, Pina described a move in demand: users already know “the what” through end-of-day notifications. What they want is “the why,” and how it concerns them. Hence, he argued, the explosion of podcasts. He cited the NYT podcast: “you know the news, now we explain why.”
“People expect journalists to have a face, a voice, to be on camera, to have a direct relationship with viewers. That’s not really new in TV. But it’s becoming more and more central.”
Pedro Pina, VP YouTube EMEA
His advice to publishers came in three points: be personality-driven, direct-to-camera and authentic (the hardest lever to move culturally, but the most decisive); don’t copy-paste TV onto YouTube, since it needs a different edit, a different rhythm, different voices; and “hire a YouTuber,” meaning one or two people who have run their own channel and can train the in-house team as it scales. Pina later clarified that he meant channel management, not putting creators in front of the camera in place of journalists.
What Le Monde’s audience actually asks for
Asked live what users want from Le Monde, Lou Grasser listed: long formats, long documentaries and journalists on screen; transparency around investigations, with “behind the scenes” coming up often; short breaking-news formats with systematic voice-over and subtitles; and recognisability of the Le Monde brand, on both long and short content.
On performance, the best-performing video cited was a storytelling piece on the Paris attacks: around 20 minutes of average watch time, more than 2 million views on the English edition and roughly 2.5 million on the French one. Long investigations and explainers perform on reach, engagement and watch time at once. Breaking-news formats, by contrast, are effective for discovery and habit-building, but not enough for long-term retention. Future priorities named by Grasser: strengthen hard-news video (with the live coverage of Ukraine and Iran as a reference), launch video podcasts in thematic series (climate, parenting), and improve video coverage of major events. On the recent municipal elections, Le Monde overperformed across the board and was an ultra leader on search, the weak spot being video and social platforms, hence the priority given to video.
Building one integrated newsroom
Le Monde shifted to a majority of digital subscribers back in 2017, but its workflows were still partly organised by medium. After study trips to American and British newsrooms, Grasser said the newsroom is now fully dedicated to digital, with a small print-specific team. The next step: getting the audio, video and other sections to genuinely work together, as an integrated newsroom rather than format-based silos. On creators, the position is clear: it is not a strategic priority for Le Monde, which would rather invest in its in-house journalists, who in Grasser’s view have the potential to carry stories on screen. For other titles in the group’s portfolio, the calculation could be different.
Monetisation: ads first, video paywall next
Pina reminded the audience that YouTube’s base model is advertising, as the historic model of publishers has always been, and that this is where you start. More than 10 monetisation modes exist on YouTube, and subscription products already exist. What is in the works is the integration between YouTube’s paywall and publishers’ own paywall, with partners like Le Monde pushing for it. The open questions: confidentiality, data handling and legal compliance.
“On a long investigation titled ‘Northern Europe is preparing for war with Russia,’ put behind the paywall on the site, we got 300 to 400 conversions in a few days. We can’t paywall on YouTube yet, so we had to publish the video on the platform a few weeks later. It’s a strong opportunity for us.”
Lou Grasser, CDO, Le Monde
12 months and 5 years out
Grasser’s 12-month horizon: deliver first-rate video coverage of the 2027 French presidential election, and make progress on dubbing and translation, notably to boost the growth of Le Monde in English. Her 5-year horizon: a newsroom no longer organised by sections (audio, video, text) but fully integrated, serving readers the content they want in the format they want. Pina’s 5-year view: that every major traditional journalism brand becomes video-first, not because it is good for YouTube, but because it is good for viewers and for society.
Methodology: written for Audiencers by Claude (Anthropic) from a Trint audio transcript of the session, translated and cleaned. Quotations in quote marks are faithful reformulations, not exact verbatims. WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress, Marseille, 3 June 2026, Partner Showcase.
