WELCOME HOME - TO THE NEW 'CAFÉBABEL'
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In 2013, the cafébabel website has undergone a dramatic redesign, underlining the role of images in online media. The new cafébabel also delves into a more profound vision of citizen journalism, all the while maintaining its key European and multilingual flavour
As of today, 1 July 2013, you’ll be surfing on to a cafébabel which is more open and more participatory in nature. The website puts you, the babelians, at the heart of its editorial process in a daring and more transparent way. You were contributing as writers, bloggers, translators, local team members, photographers… Now, you have the power to become 'content curators' by selecting the best of the crop from the online community to fashion your own thematic ‘group’. You can interact more directly with other babelians by joining each other in these online 'groups', all focused around the current affairs topics which get your fingers typing the most.
cafébabel has been evenly split into three complementary sections. Firstly, the magazine continues to be curated by editors. Secondly, the local offices page is designed for our dedicated volunteers working from different cities across the continent and beyond. Last but by no means the least, the ‘community’ page collating every thematic ‘group’ in terms of content.
cafébabel prides itself on its core team of professional editors. Their role at Paris headquarters remains as important as it always has, as ‘keepers’ of the website’s editorial line. They will continue to inspire your minds with calls for articles. They will select, edit and publish the best content from the ‘community’ section of the site, to be reposted on its ‘magazine’ level. This will be their marker of the quality coming in from the citizen journalism activity online. They are also there to guide you along the process and raise the bar for the pan-European perspective of your potential contributions.
It’s been a year in development, and the website is now finally online. We count on you to embody cafébabel and its spirit as much as you have been doing in the past twelve years with us. As with every ‘work in progress’, we also rely on you letting us know if you spot a bug somewhere, or any of your suggestions to improve the website, since we’re planning a second phase of development in October 2013.
This is our year!
A très bientôt sur cafébabel!
Alexandre Heully
Executive director, cafébabel