Lagardère Active appoints Jean-Pierre Elkabbach as head of a new business unit: Lagardère News

Didier Quillot, Chairman and CEO of Lagardère Active’s supervisory board, announces the establishment of Lagardère News, which is to be headed by Jean-Pierre Elkabbach.

This new organization will bring together Lagardère Active’s news media around the following brands: Europe 1 and Europe 1 Sport, Paris Match, le Journal du Dimanche and Newsweb.

The creation of Lagardère News comes within the framework of the new « active growth » plan for the Group which was put in train to assist in the transformation of mainstream businesses prompted by the development of Digital and by changes in media usage as well as in the news journalism profession.

To meet these new challenges at the head of Lagardère News, Jean-Pierre Elkabbach will be pursuing the following missions:

• Supervise and ensure editorial coordination among all the group’s news media ;
• Set up a news feed for all the media in the Group;
• Start thinking about how to integrate mainstream media and Web-based activities and about the changes effecting the profession of journalist.

To successfully carry out these assignments, Jean-Pierre Elkabbach will establish a coordination team to assist him. He will also preside over an Editiorial Board composed of the four managers in charge of the editorial teams.

Didier Quillot said: «Jean-Pierre succeeded in turning around Europe 1 and increasing its audience and initiated and carried out the transformation of Europe 1 into a global medium by developing a Website for Europe 1, launching the Europe 1 Sport station and thus contributing to raising awareness of the Europe 1 brand. He was therefore the right person to establish the new Lagardère News BU and contribute to its successful expansion».