Frédéric Daruty is a graduate of EM Normandie and president of 20 Minutes, an iconic media outlet that has become essential for younger generations. He looks back on his atypical career and his daily life at the head of a newspaper which is read every month by millions of people.
The career of Frédéric Daruty, president of 20 Minutes
Can you go back over your journey?
After my scientific baccalaureate, I went to an IUT Tech de Co. I then joined what was called at the time ESC Le Havre in parallel admissions. The AST competitions were complex at the time, the tests varied greatly. I therefore targeted two or three schools, including EM Normandie.
P&G, AOL, Prisma… Your career before 20 Minutes is atypical. How was it built?
I left EM Normandie in 1991. It was the end of the Gulf War and there was a visible effect on the job market. The number of job offers quickly dried up. Ultimately, what guided me was continually being trained. Procter & Gamble offered a very regular training cycle in the field. I wanted to work in the sales sector, I wasn’t a natural sales person, but I thought it would be interesting to have this backgroundno matter what job I would do.
The other common thread is the desire to always work for brands with a strong reputation. The dimensions of image, power, but also this general public aspect have always guided me.
How did you get to the head of 20 Minutes?
At the end of the 90s, the internet bubble showed us that the web allowed us to be agile, to move quickly and to launch into new ideas. So I went to a startup for a year, then I joined AOL. My role was to grow consumer brands through digital media. I took over management of AOL, but my journey was chaotic, because AOL decided to only maintain this activity in Anglo-Saxon countries. So I closed the French branch and joined Prisma Media. Within the group, I structured a team of developers for the sites, developed the advertising network and grew the activity. Finally, three years ago, I was asked to take over as president of 20 Minutes and that particularly interested me, because it was a position of responsibility with a lot of autonomy.
The world of media marks your career. Why does this sector attract you?
It was mainly digital that guided me, first in the e-commerce part, then in the world of media. I entered through the back door of digital, before going to paper with 20 Minutes.
The 20 Minutes challenges
Precisely, at the end of 2014, your predecessor said that “ 20 Minutes is now a pure player which also publishes a newspaper “. Is this still the case today?
This is even more true today, because we organized the broadcast around the digital first. We have worked on a new formula that responds to the immediacy of information. We also revised the format to offer the reader something in addition to digital. 20 Minutes lives solely from its advertising revenue and we are developing this line of revenue through digital technology.
However, the digital information environment is much broader. Today, our competitors are both Franceinfo and BFM. 20 Minutes also draws its power from the paper format and we do not want to cut this branch.
20 Minutes belongs to two shareholders (Rossel and Sipa-Ouest-France) who operate with a subscription system. Has the question of transforming the 20 Minutes model already arisen?
For Rossel and Sipa-Ouest, the model 20 Minutes is very complementary to what they offer. We are free, our target is younger. Our territory coverage is greater.
The question has never arisen in the past, but was raised during the health crisis because of the difficulty of distributing our newspaper in the street. However, we must recreate value for the reader, so that they understand why they must pay to access content that they can have for free today. This requires a complete transformation and requires a lot of resources, but also a change in the production format. We therefore kept the idea of strengthening our free model and even launched an advertising campaign on the subject. This is our axis of differentiation.
20 Minutes is a 100% free paper and online media. How are you adapting to a world where the paper press is in decline?
Our strategy is really to keep a paper model. It’s about brand power. It’s a job of management and good allocation of resources between digital and print.
The daily life of Frédéric Daruty as president of 20 Minutes
What does the daily life of the president of 20 Minutes look like?
You have to be well surrounded, because you can’t be an expert in everything! I am lucky to have an editor-in-chief and an editorial director in whom I place great confidence. I am also lucky to have a sales team that promotes the brand. Other teams are essential: production, manufacturing, distribution of the newspaper, developers… This is knowledge that I do not have, but that I know how to organize and I trust these experts.
The role of the boss is really to give direction, to organize the work of these experts and to find the key contacts. The biggest difficulty is not intervening in employees’ tasks and letting them do it, a subject I know well because I started at the bottom of the ladder.
What is your biggest challenge today?
If, one day, we realize that the weight of the newspaper is not economically viable, then this could call into question the paper publication. For now, the real challenge is growing all our digital media.
Where do you see yourself in a few years?
I ask myself this question less than ten years ago. We think about our career in terms of position progression. I’m having a blast today, because I hold a position of responsibility, in an agile company that manages to move the lines easily. It’s quite exciting. Today, I don’t see myself in another company.
