 | |
| Type | Online newspaper |
|---|---|
| Owner(s) | EUobserver.com ASBL |
| Founder(s) | Lisbeth Kirk |
| Founded | 2000 |
| Website | euobserver |
EUobserver is a European online newspaper, launched in 2000 by the Brussels-based organisation EUobserver.com ASBL.
The newspaper provides both daily reports and in-depth coverage on international affairs related to the European Union (EU).[1] It is regarded as one of the first English language media outlets dedicated to the reporting of EU affairs,[2] since joined by The Brussels Times, EURACTIV and Politico Europe.[3]
The website was first launched in 2000 by Lisbeth Kirk, a Danish journalist.[citation needed]
There is much academic debate over whether EUobserver, along with other similar publications, can be considered to be contributing to the creation of a pan-European public sphere.[4][5]
Kirk served as both editor-in-chief and business chief of the paper until 2015,[6] after which she was replaced by Eric Maurice, who took over as editor-in-chief of the publication.[7] In 2019, Koert Debeuf was appointed as new editor-in-chief of EUobserver.[8]
The newspaper claims both financial independence from EU institutions and a daily circulation of 60,000.[9][10]
In a 2008 poll of 100 Brussels-based journalistsbyAPCO, one third claimed to use the publication as their source for EU news, making it, at the time, the "second most influential" media outlet reporting on EU affairs behind the Financial Times.[11] Also, in a 2016 media survey, conducted by ComRes and Burson-Marsteller on 'What Influences the Influencers', it was found that EUobserver tended to be the preferred source of news for EU officials.[12]
Since EUobserver is an online medium, with the exception of its quarterly magazine editions,[13] it relies on a growing social media following on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, reaching 330,000 followers in 2019.[14]
EUobserver provides an extremely useful report on daily issues concerning the EU.
Every newspaper stand in Europe provides English-language newspapers and magazines, yet none of them are produced on the European Continent expressly with the intention of reaching a Continental European audience. Rather, newspapers such as the International Tribute or magazines such as TimeorNewsweek are intended for a readership of English native speakers abroad and an international elite of non-native speakers. Thus, we cannot really group these under the heading of 'English in European media'. The only first development in this direction is, to the author's knowledge, the online news magazine EU Observer, which presents EU-related news to a European audience in English.
One of the factors that restrict advocacy think tanks in the EU from emerging is the lack of widely read European media, not disregarding Politico.eu, EUobserver, and EurActiv.
A European public sphere can be imagined in two ways. The first is a pan-European public sphere, carried by pan European media, available across the entire EU territory. Some of these exist today (Arte, Euronews, European Voice, EUobserver, ...), but reach a very limited audience [...] A problem for the rise of such European media is obviously the absence of a common language in the EU as English cannot (yet) be considered the lingua franca of all its social classes and geographical areas.
Of these media the Financial Times has a stable position as the leading news source [...] The second most influential media among journalists is EUobserver, a Brussels-based online news source. A third of correspondents said they got their EU news from the EUobserver in the APCO poll, while 53 per cent said they read news on the site at least once a week, according to the ComRes ZN survey.
