Developing and disseminating quality information at no cost, gaining high visibility thanks to the relevance (or irrelevance) of the content, is possible. Nassira el Moadem, former editor-in-chief of the Bondy Blog, recounts the adventure of this tool, which is already competing with social networks.
Born in Romorantin-Lanthenay (Sologne), Nassira el Moadem is the third of six siblings in a working-class family of Moroccan origin. She studied in Tours and was admitted to Sciences Po Grenoble in 2003 for a four-year period with a focus on the Near and Middle East. She hesitated for a diplomatic career but won the ESJ competition in Lille from which she graduated in 2012.
A few years earlier, in 2008, Nassira el Moadem had joined the Bondy Blog, a medium created in 2005 by the Swiss magazine L’Hebdo in the midst of the suburbs crisis. The aim was to talk about life “on the other side of the periphery”, the suburbs (etymologically the place of the ban, of the banished) to which no French journalist at the time seemed to pay attention, at least before the violence. In 2005, the town of Bondy (93), 53,000 inhabitants, had no newspaper, no institution reflecting social life. The Bondy Blog, without doing so on purpose, was a response to an expectation and was a success, at first local and regional and soon national and international. The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, The Guardian, the biggest media will come to Bondy to talk about the Bondy Blog. French campaigning politicians will also come to the Bondy box, which has a TV show on France Ô. The suburbs are a reservoir of votes, the blog provides a national echo to this visit “in the suburbs”.
While multiplying her collaborations in the French media (i-télé Canal+, LCP, France Ô, France 2), Nassira el Moadem remains close to the Bondy Blog during her journey and takes over its management and editorial staff until December 2018.
Nassira el Moadem is the author of the book “Les Filles de Romorantin“, (L’Iconoclaste, 2019).