Over the last couple of days the future of the printed newspaper has been discussed and debated 15th World Editors Forum. Some declare it dead, others are optimistic. Pierre Haski, Founder and Editor in Chief at Rue89.com, doesn't need to worry. He spoke at the 7th session session under the slogan "There's a life after the newspaper".

Rue89.com was launched about a year ago on the same day that Nicolas Sarkozy was elected for president. And a year later Rue89.com is doing a lot better than he is, Pierre Haski stated. The independent French news website was launched from Pierre Haskis apartment since they did not have an office at the time. Today they have 650,000 unique readers each month. The websites was founded by journalists who, just like Pierre Haski, have kept blogs in the past and really come to see the how the Internet enables journalists to connect with their readers.

Rue89.com does not have a Reuters-wire. They did a first but soon realized that it was "money for nothing", since people are overflowed with that sort of free information, and if readers came to their site it was to read something unique, and they don't feel that they've suffered from not having that kind of material.

The site belongs to the "pro-am" family, with content produced both by professionals and amateurs. Their information comes from three voices, one being the actual journalists, the other experts and the third from readers/bloggers. Approximately one third of the content is produced by non-journalists, including the experts. Already from the beginning Rue89.com decided that journalists should have the final say in what goes up on the website, since they have knowledge about ethical rules etc. The biggest challenge has been to manage the comments. In the beginning they were over-flooded by comments and they had a crisis on their hands after a few months and needed to make some changes. Now readers have to be registered to be able to make a comment. You can use a free e-mailadress which really doesn't give you a real identity, but just by introducing that they "got rid of 90% of the crap".

Pierre Haski explained how the comments really are gold-mines, even though not all of them are gold. Many of their most successful stories over this first year have come from the comments made by readers, either the comments have contained actual tips or a journalist has found a good story in the ten or so lines that the reader has written.