The debate was moderated by well-known journalist Sylvain Attal and panelists included the sociologist Jean Marie Charon, editor of the International Herald Tribune, Roger Cohen, Marc Drillech, director general of communications and media of Ionis education group, David Guiraud, director general Les Echos group, and director general of Le Figaro SA, Francis Morel.

According to M. Guiraud, newspapers’ responsibility lies in three main aspects: ethics, independence and reliability. All of them are influenced by money, as only profitable newspapers are truly independent and therefore reliable and hopefully ethic. Another issue connected to newspapers’ responsibility is towards whom do they feel responsible. In the opinion of M. Guiraud, American journalists believe they are responsible to their public, whereas French journos are more worried about their own colleagues.  Lastly, in order to assume all of their different responsibilities, journalists need to be constantly trained and to attain a true expertise of the subjects they write about.

M. Cohen added courage to M. Guiraud list of journalistic responsibilities: “If you want to write about Chechnya you cannot do it from Moscow” he said. 

Starting from the thoughts about journalists’ education, the debate focused on the challenge of New Media for the future of newspapers.

M. Cohen considered that in the USA, where newspapers depend more on advertisements than on circulation, advertising is moving towards the Internet. He added that the only department of the New York Times whose revenues are increasing is the paper's online services. M. Cohen concluded advising the journalism students sitting in the front row to put equal efforts in acquiring writing skills and computer literacy.

“I do not agree” reacted M. Morel from Le Figaro, “the profession of journalist for the printed press is much more fun and interesting than writing for the Internet!” M. Morel thesis is that new media never make the traditional disappear. He claims to be optimistic about the future of the printed press because millions of people still buying newspapers evidently do so because they do not find what they need in alternative sources.

Sociologist Jean Marie Charon disagreed with M. Cohen, insisting that journalists should not multitask across several media. On the contrary, the recipe for survival is to have newspapers focus on the writing excellence of their editors.

Director general of Les Echos Guiraud asserted to be as optimistic as his colleague from Le Figaro. “Our job is to screen and distribute the tons of information that one can find on the other media”. His opinion is that the power of the newspaper is being able, in 40 pages, to provide its readers with all they needs to know for that day. The Internet will never have the same role, because it is too broad, “it is like entering the Alessandria library”. In this new media landscape, the responsibility of journalists is to seek out quality material from blogs and cover that news in their papers. 

Blogs and citizen journalists did not get much credit overall in the debate. Marc Drillech claimed that those who write a blog are not automatically journalists, because they lack commitment. Morel defined bloggers as mere aggregators of news, just like news websites.

In response, Drillech underlined that news websites provide readers with news that can be found in all newspapers of the day, from classifieds through technology. The big difference with the printed press is that only in a paper can you find analysis “because in order to write an analysis you need an opinion, and in order to have an opinion you need a true journalist”.

As for citizen journalists, M. Cohen said that they would not take the place of traditional editors, because “it is not the citizen journalist that leaves for Baghdad”, and therefore society needs newspapers to provide it with a starting point. According to M. Cohen investigative journalism is the field where professionals of the print world need to concentrate their investments.

“La Cité de la reussite” has been held every year beginning in 1989 in the lecture halls of the Sorbonne and attracts around 20,000 participants. Its sessions on economics, politics, science, culture, etc., circle around a common focal point, of which this year's was "Responsibility."

Cité de la réussite