Europe First-Hand

People in search of the editorial office of cafebabel.com will end up unexpectedly in a red light district. Boutiques with imported goods, cafes, and Asian fast food restaurants line the street, La Rue Saint-Denis, which meanders through the Hall and Bonne-Nouvelle Quarters. In between these two quarters, every few meters, sex shops, nightclubs, neon signs advertising “adult” Thai-massages entice passersby. Out front, in the Rue Saint-Denis, there isn’t even a sign marking the headquarters of the Babel network, located in the courtyard. In the courtyard’s austere stairwell everything is tranquil, only the reverberations of footsteps on the dusty floor disturb the quiet. But behind the iron door on the third floor, a frenzy of work reigns. The air is full of whirring, buzzing, typing, and sentence fragments in various languages. The primary language spoken is French, but given the presence of seven nationalities in the office, the language hodgepodge is of “Babelian” proportions. Almost every editor there is under the age of 30.

Behind a glass window, right next to the entrance, sits Adriano Farano, the CEO, chief editor, and co-founder of the European magazine cafebabel.com. He gesticulates and rolls his “r”s with a Neapolitan verve, as he speaks broadly about the group’s underlying concept. Sometimes he gets carried away with his enthusiasm. Then he cuts himself off and Alexandre Heully, who is responsible for cafebabel.com’s public relations, takes over. Heully speaks in fluent, silky, French-accented English; however, when he speaks of climbing readership numbers and new additions to the Babel-Blogs, he intensifies his speech into a rising Staccato. He was also a founding Babelian.

Heully and Farano met in 2001, during their Erasmus year at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Straßburg. There, with the support of 10 other students of different nationalities, they organized the “Babel International” society, which functioned from then on as the umbrella organization for the online magazine. The founders are not overly fond of the grey Brussels bureaucrats, who do little but produce papers and lack liveliness and close ties to the people. “Europe needs faces and stories,” states Farano. Cafebabel.com is considered to be a platform for the “Eurogeneration”—those young Europeans who study abroad and have mastered several foreign languages.

A few weeks after the founders got together, in February 2001, cafebabel.com appeared, at first in English, French, Italian, and Spanish. As the Erasmus year came to an end, a majority of the group returned to their local universities and organized local newsrooms. “That was an absolute Diaspora-effect,” recalls Farano, as “cafebabel.com expanded rapidly from then on. At the same time, it became harder to coordinate all of the local newsrooms.” In order to maintain a higher level of professionalism, three of the students organized the Parisian central newsroom.

Babelian à la Carte

From the beginning the group floated around the idea of a multiple-language medium, which would function like a grass roots movement. At the heart of cafebabel.com is the community, the network. Any one of the approximately 8500 registered Babelians can participate at will in the editorial process. “The intensity levels are quite varied,” explains Farano. “There are very passive users, who have the opportunity to read and comment on articles from cafebabel.com. There are also journalists, bloggers, and translators who contribute to the content weekly.” Because fresh, first-hand information is the most important capital of cafebabel.com, the editors work closely with the volunteers. Ideas and topic suggestions for the articles fly every which way, and from them the weekly online magazine is assembled. In addition to the classic sections for “Politics” and “Economics,” Cafebabel.com approaches the “Diversity of Europe,” theme hands-on with sections like “Njam Miam,” which explores European food culture. “Tower of Babel” traces the origins of figures of speech and the variations in meaning across languages. “Brunch with …” covers Babel interviews with European artists. There are also about 80 Babel-Blogs. When explaining the principal of cafebabel.com, Alexandre Heully speaks of “collaborative journalism”: “We work hand in hand in order to get the best possible product from our volunteers. In the end these articles live up to our professional standards.” Cafebabel.com is not just as an online-medium; its most important role is as a site for networking. Every registered user is tagged on an interactive map, which shows any nearby Babelians. The virtual reality is then transformed into a “real existing” network whenever two Babelians meet up in a European city, start a local editorial office, or make the trip to the annual Babel Academy.

Polyglot and Prize-Winning

Meanwhile, cafebabel.com appears in six languages. Completed articles are published weekly in the original language and, concurrently, are translated into 5 other Babel-languages. For a while there was even a Catalonian version, but it was discontinued due to low readership. Heully regrets this: “I find it important that cafebabel.com appears in regional European languages.”

Heully and Farano are particularly proud of the German-speaking version. “It was difficult to start,” recalls Farano, “because Germans are cautious and serious. It is difficult to win them over on a project whose success depends on them.” Farano adds: “From the beginning there were also German students involved in the environmental projects, but most of them reacted similarly: ‘It’s very interesting, but …’. When we finally brought out the German version in 2004, we used it to judge our performance. It served in the meantime as our serious medium.” The Polish version is also dear to both Farano and Heully. “We don’t want a medium that is exclusively concerned with West-European themes,” emphasized Heully, “instead we want the attitudes of the Eurogeneration to catch on in Eastern Europe.” By now, 8 of the 30 local editorial offices are located in Eastern Europe, including in Prague, Budapest, Sofia, and Minsk; there is also a full-time editor employed in Warsaw.

Aside from the statistics—approximately 550, 000 site views per month and weekly newsletters sent to 35,000 subscribers—cafebabel.com has been showered with awards. In 2004 it received an award for the work done for the “Prix de l’Initiative Européene” of the European press establishment, the European Parliament, and the European House in Paris. The European Commission gave them the project “Europe on the Ground,” which Babel-authors researching in different European cities sent in to receive the “Golden Stars Award.” In addition, the Babel International Society has enjoyed a position as an NGO observer at the Council of Europe since 2004. The list of co-operation partners of cafebabel.com is impressive as well: with MSN, ARTE, and Cicero are already on board and it seems that in 2009-2010 the contents of cafebabel.com will appear on the website presseurop.eu of the International Courier.

Financially, Babel International is viewed for the most part as a charitable organization by public benefactors—for example, the EU parliament and the French foreign ministry—and by private ones, such as the American Knight Foundation and in the past from the Compania de San Paulo in Italy and the Robert Bosch Foundation. “We consciously decided to seek the sponsorship of a mix of private and public sources to insure the independence of the magazine,” clarified Heully. Nonetheless, they are open to sponsors and web partners. Although the public-finance model has worked up to now, sums up Heully, in the long run cafebabel.com will have to tap other resources to sustain its finances. After all, the national competitors are lurking around every corner in this highly competitive market.

Although around 80 percent of the Babel-readership has an academic degree and most speak a foreign language, Heully and Farano do not see cafebabel.com as an exclusive elite medium for privileged academics. “Naturally we are avant-garde,” acknowledges Farano, “but we are also a growing movement that reaches more and more younger Europeans.” Heully adds: “We definitely are not an institutional magazine, a copy of Brussels. There are no European flags or long-winded speeches on cafebabel.com. No, what we try to convey is the everyday life of the European—in culture, politics, and business. And naturally, a certain education level is helpful to appreciate cafebabel.com’s offerings.”

For Farano and Heully, the emotion of Erasmus was not just a part of their education – instead it was an attitude. “I think one can remain ‘Erasmus’ in spirit, even at the age of 60,” said Heully. He can well imagine still working for cafebabel.com in ten years. Meanwhile, Farano jests with the waiter, who serves him coffee: “You French have been torturing me for years with your terrible coffee,” he cries and in playful exasperation pulls his hair. Later he mentions his wife, a French woman, and his son. “The boy is neither French, nor Italian. He is Babelian.”