The employment of professional journalists by a media outlet must remain a condition for obtaining public aid for the press.

Do we need journalists in newsrooms? And, for that matter, how do we recognize them? The answer outlined in a decree to be published in the coming days surprised and worried us all the more because its history is closely linked to our own. It will now be possible for a media outlet to receive public funding even if its content is not produced by professional journalists.

We are journalists. In 2019, we had all been working together at Science et Vie for five, ten, fifteen, or twenty-five years, when Reworld Media bought the publication, along with many others. A year later, the new shareholder decided to replace the journalists responsible for the website with "content managers" who no longer report to the editor-in-chief. We protested, we mobilized, we went on strike, we made our fight known outside the editorial office, emphasizing that the editorial independence of a media outlet rests in part on the protection of the status of professional journalist, guaranteed by French law, which allows us to resist pressure from shareholders and advertisers.

But we quickly see on our site appear some