Former Altice Media boss in new online news and video move

Bernard Mourad

Bernard Mourad, the former Altice Media chief who left to work for Emmanuel Macron’s presidential bid, is planning to launch a new online video initiative that will lean on social media networks, according to a French press report.

According to Challenges.fr, Mourad has teamed up with former Dailymotion chief Giuseppe de Martino and current Libération editorial director Johan Hufnagel to launch Looper, a new service on the model of the US Now This offering launched by former Huffington Post executives in 2012, or Al Jazeera’s AJ+.

Both services offer text-based news and short news-related videos that can be viewed and made sense of on mobile phones without activating the sound. Social networks – in particular Facebook – are the key distribution channel.

Mourad has reportedly secured financial support to the tune of about €1 million for the venture, with supporters including Franck Papazian, founder of MediaSchool Group, and Pierre Fraidenreich, both of whom invested in Altice-backed Libération.

Mourad quit his post as Altice Media Group president in October last year to take on the role of campaign director for Macron, a story also broken initially by Challenges.fr.