From blog to book

From blog to book

Quick summary: when riots erupted in the French "banlieues" last autumn, a Swiss newsmagazine started sending almost all of its reporters on a 7-to-10 days rotation to the town of Bondy, near Paris; they worked out of a spartan room borrowed from the local football club; on top of writing weekly stories for the magazine, they blogged intensely about what they saw, people they met and the things they said, bits and pieces of information and analysis they picked up in their reporting; their blog attracted thousands of readers and hundreds of comments and alot of media attention; when they ran out of reporters to send to Bondy, the editors chose a group of young local volunteers, offered them journalistic and blogging training, and in March gave them the "virtual keys" to the blog.
(More in an article and a previous post).
Now the young "Bondynois" are blogging, building the first local "media outlet" in Bondy. And - interesting symbol - the whole is financed by the royalties of a just-published book (cover image on the right; publisher Le Seuil) that includes large portions the original BondyBlog, those written by the Swiss journalists and by their readers - because the comments and conversations are reprinted, too.
The book reads like a long, full-immersion, participatory "reportage", one with a variety of voices telling stories of real life in the "banlieues" that almost never get reflected by the media. With the banlieues and their ethnic tensions, high jobless rates and dilapidated infrastructure likely to become central themes of the French presidential campaign (which is just starting, the electionwill take place in exactly one year, first round on April 22, second on May 6, 2007) this book and the BondyBlog are necessary tools for a better understanding of today's France.

Quick summary: when riots erupted in the French "banlieues" last autumn, a Swiss newsmagazine started sending almost all of its reporters on a 7-to-10 days rotation to the town of Bondy, near Paris; they worked out of a spartan room borrowed from the local football club; on top of writing weekly stories for the magazine, they blogged intensely about what they saw, people they met and the things they said, bits and pieces of information and analysis they picked up in their reporting; their blog attracted thousands of readers and hundreds of comments and alot of media attention; when they ran out of reporters to send to Bondy, the editors chose a group of young local volunteers, offered them journalistic and blogging training, and in March gave them the "virtual keys" to the blog.
(More in an article and a previous post).
Now the young "Bondynois" are blogging, building the first local "media outlet" in Bondy. And - interesting symbol - the whole is financed by the royalties of a just-published book (cover image on the right; publisher Le Seuil) that includes large portions the original BondyBlog, those written by the Swiss journalists and by their readers - because the comments and conversations are reprinted, too.
The book reads like a long, full-immersion, participatory "reportage", one with a variety of voices telling stories of real life in the "banlieues" that almost never get reflected by the media. With the banlieues and their ethnic tensions, high jobless rates and dilapidated infrastructure likely to become central themes of the French presidential campaign (which is just starting, the electionwill take place in exactly one year, first round on April 22, second on May 6, 2007) this book and the BondyBlog are necessary tools for a better understanding of today's France.