Marsactu Wireless

Someone who will log into our website from the Wi-Fi of the place won’t see our paywall. Community centers would then allow their users to enjoy quality journalism for free.

Marsactu Wireless aims to bring online investigation to the most concerned citizens. We will open free reading points in their everyday places like cafés and community centers, with specific work to make this offer visible, including workshops with journalists.

Target group

As local media who cares about its impact, that question is critical. Observing the geographical distribution of our members is a source of humility. Our 2000 paying subscribers in Marseilles city center represent 1 % of the population (less than 15 years excluded). Quite good for an independent media like Marsactu. Yet, in the north of the city, which gathers unemployment and precarity, we reach seven times less people. This rate is almost as low in the east, more mixed from a social point of view but also peripheral to the city.

Goals of the project

Our main ambition with Marsactu Wireless is to bring our work to a broader audience, focusing on districts we cover but are less read. In the partnered social centers, Marseilles inhabitants of very different backgrounds and wealth will have free access to high quality information. We plan to open Marsactu Wireless in about thirty places, and have hosted a dozen workshops, to reach several thousands of new readers.

Implemented activities 

They developed a complete system for an open access offer to our online media: back office, landing page, social media and PR campaign, on-site communication kit. They also activated the access in 14 sites and delivered 6 workshops at the end of the financed phase.

Impact addressing news deserts

The impacts are observed on several levels. The larger, in terms of metrics, is the reach of their social media campaign (around 500 k Meta users, more than half the city's population). But in marketing terms it stays at the step of awareness, and with an already-used channel. Even if the reach of the on-site communication kit in the 16 places is less metric-based, it relies upon the genuine impact of the project, because a different public is adressed through a new channel. And, with the help of workshops and the community center's staff mediation, and eventually reading the articles, the relationship can move towards the consideration step.