European online magazine - Café Babel

Become Babelian

Aiming to go beyond national politics and media, cafebabel.com offers its readers every week critical analyses of European current affairs on the internet in seven different languages - English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Polish. The idea was to create the first multilingual European magazine on current affairs designed for readers across borders, analysing the political and intellectual evolution of the continent from a European perspective


By MARKO ANDREJIC
from Belgrade, SERBIA


Cafebabel.com represents a new genre of European media. Available entirely online, it is the fruit of the efforts of a network of more than 1200 voluntary contributors in over 28 European cities, from Madrid to Warsaw, including Brussels, Berlin and Paris. Their aim is to contribute to the emergence of a European public opinion. Cafebabel.com is the place where the new generation can come to make its voice heard. It is always open to new contributors.

Aiming to go beyond national politics and media, this online magazine offers its readers every week critical analyses of European current affairs on the internet in seven different languages - English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Polish. The idea was to create the first multilingual European magazine on current affairs designed for readers across borders, analysing the political and intellectual evolution of the continent from a European perspective.

With over 400 000 visitors a month and a target public of 18-35 year olds (67% of readership), cafebabel.com has become the first European current affairs magazine accessible to the majority of Europeans in their mother tongue. As an original media initiative, it is at the forefront of participatory journalism, relying on a unique network of collaborators and a community across Europe.

The way to success

On February 1st, 2001 the Babel International Association was created at Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Strasbourg, and published Issue No.1 on www.cafebabel.com. In October they have established 6 regional cafebabel.com editorial offices: Prague, Paris, Strasbourg, Rome, Leeds, and Granada. In following months and years, the new site was launched, the European central editorial office was established in Paris, and new language editions have started online.

In October 2004 cafebabel.com received the Neweuropeans Grand Prize in Youth category. Just after that, in November 2004 their biggest conference to date takes place in Brussels. "Is European federalism dead?" gathered together some of the best-known European political personalities.

Café Babel breaks the 100,000 visitors per month mark in November 2005. In May 2008, a brand new version of the entire website is published. All the contents - magazine, blogs, forums - are organised following a common tag system. Registered readers are offered a multilingual version of cafebabel.com according to their linguistic preferences. The last activity of Café Babel is EUdebate2009.eu website, launched in December 2008: a website dedicated to the European elections in June 2009.

Become babelian

Launched by the European magazine cafebabel.com, EUdebate2009.eu is an independent internet site, the first web 2.0 platform to get the opinion leaders of the people of Europe talking with European political parties. Its objective is to create a space where expression, information and multilingual debate can take place, in order to politicise and Europeanise the 2009 electoral campaign.

You can also become babelian here and help them cook up European, multilingual specialties: introduce yourself and group up your contributions, post a comment on babelblogs, the first multingual platform for expression, read cafebabel.com magazine in the language of your choice; write if journalism is your passion, translate, blog, moderate or debate.


(Published: 10.01.2009.)