After making the web laugh for over a decade, Le Gorafi, the parody news site born online, is attempting a move that looks like a joke... but says a lot about the times: bringing out a paper newspaper. A 100% unedited monthly by post, "recyclable and claimed, with the elegance that characterizes the title, to be "ideal for your toilets" .
From Twitter feed to mailbox
Le Gorafi was first built as a typically digital object: a tone calibrated for virality, short writing, topical humor and distribution boosted by sharing. The project got off the ground during the 2012 presidential campaign, first on Twitter, then as a blog, before becoming a fully-fledged site in September of the same year.
Today, the pure player is taking a different path, with a provocative slogan that will make Two Sides and Culture Papier pale in comparison: "At last, trees cut down for a good reasonâeuros!"
Le Gorafi papier, the newspaper "anti-algorithm
Behind the joke, the argument is clear: make paper a way out of contemporary addictions.
Sébastien Liebus, co-founder and managing director of Le Gorafi, sums up the launch as a conquest on LinkedIn: "At a time when the press is questioning itself, when billionaires are washing out editorial offices, or others are manipulating social network algorithms, Le Gorafi is going to free itself from all that and become (...) the first media outlet to launch a print edition since 1936."
In concrete terms, it's a 16-page monthly in Berlin format, sent to letterboxes, "thanks to a revolutionary postal delivery system" .
Le Gorafi promises 100% new content, with its fundamentals (society, culture, politics, sports...) enriched with items that mimic the codes of the press (fact checking, horoscopes, weather, readers' letters, games, stock market tips, etc.).
Printing is handled by the La Dépêche group, a shareholder since October 2024 in DC Company, publisher of Le Gorafi and other publications.
Rue 89 and Causeur: two examples of pure-player newspapers
This move away from paper is not unprecedented, and we don't have to go back as far as 1936: the online press in France has already made several attempts to bring a printed object into existence, with varying degrees of success
The case of Rue89 remains one of the most emblematic examples of a news pure player's transition to paper: in 2010, the site announced a monthly paper magazine (Revue 89), sold at newsstands and featuring a selection of re-edited and reworked articles from the web. After 17 issues, however, the journal came to a halt.
At the time, the idea was to extend the site in a format to be kept, in the hope of capturing a public that liked to read differently, and to find an economic relay.
Conversely, Causeur is following a more stable trajectory. Launched in 2007, the web medium launched a monthly print version in June 2008. The title is still available today, proving that a back-and-forth between web and print can be sustained over time. Let's wish the same to Gorafi.
