LENA

Leading European Newspaper Alliance (LENA) is an organisation based in Brussels, set up by seven European newspapers in March 2015, to improve journalism in Europe. The group aims to share content and technology practice within the transformation the journalism industry is currently experiencing, in an environment characterised by rapid growth in Internet-based readers.

The members of LENA are Die Welt (Germany), El País (Spain), La Repubblica (Italy), Le Figaro (France), Le Soir (Belgium), Swiss German-language newspaper Anzeiger-Tages and French-language newspaper Tribune de Genève.^[1] These publications have a joint readership of seven million, in addition to 43 million unique Internet users.

Javier Moreno, editor in-chief of El País from 2006 to 2014, is the group's director.^[2]

The initiative is intended to consolidate European public opinion through content that the seven members of LENA share and produce jointly. This includes exchanging journalists and other employees. Member newspapers share new practices and digital techniques in technology, trade and publishing.

Each newspaper submits selected articles to a shared platform, where members can select the ones they believe to be of greatest interest to their readers, to increase dissemination of content like interviews, reports and opinion articles, written by experts, academics and public figures from different disciplines.

As part of its strategy, LENA promotes and organises international events on events and trends in Europe. In January 2016, as part of the World Economic Forum, held in Davos, LENA organised a debate on the challenges represented by integrating refugees.

Issues for which LENA members have worked jointly include refugees of the Syrian Civil War, the Greek government-debt crisis, the political challenges of the EU and the consequences of economic sanctions on Russia.

In September 2016, LENA will fund a conference in Paris on the challenges represented by the digital era in relation to the security and privacy of citizens of the European Union. More than 150 political leaders, regulators, business people and representatives of civil society have been invited, to a debate on how to protect people’s security and basic rights online.

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