Le Desk

Founded in 2015, by veteran journalist Ali Amar and his spouse Fatima-Zahra Lqadiri, this french-language online paper had the goal of becoming a collaborative investigation paper, owned by its founders alongside art dealer and angel investor, Aziz Aouadi and its and key journalists of the news website. Its economic model was to be built on reader subscription and not advertising in an effort to maintain complete independence. However, in 2016, a little over a year after its launch and following an opening to advertisement, Le Desk announced the failure of its economic model and was on the brink of foreclosure. In a last attempt for survival, it launched a social media campaign in October 2016.

Le Desk at the time of its launch, benefited from the support of the European program Ebticar-Media, that supports innovative media projects in the Arab world. Le Desk did innovate in terms of editorial content as well as in terms of form. Its investigations and long format papers, fact-checking, lives and curated infographics and visuals etc.. were all given a prime role in this venture. Soon after its launch, Le Desk established prized partnerships abroad with medias (Mediapart en France, TSA en Algérie) as well as with networks such as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Le Desk worked with Reporters Without Borders on the MOM study as partner from August to November 2017.