My guest is Victoria Main.

Victoria Main is a media strategist with the consulting firm in Brussels, Sec Newgate, EU.

She's a former journalist and is widely recognised in Brussels as an expert on the Brussels

EU media scene.

Welcome to the podcast, Victoria.

Thank you very much, Paul, and thank you for the fine introduction. I'm honored to be here.

Right. The honours mind as well.

Well, as I said in the intro, you know a lot about the Brussels Bedia scene.

And normally that may not be a subject of a podcast.

But as you know, as well as anybody else, if not better than anybody else,

there's been so many changes quite recently, but also going back. And obviously

this podcast, I suspect, will focus on the English language Brussels media scene and the specialist

outlet to focus on the EU almost to the exclusion of everything else as opposed to what we used to

call mainstream media. But when do you think this these changes first started to happen,

people say there's a kind of Brussels before or after Politico, which has just celebrated its 10th

anniversary by saying that. We may be paying too much attention to Politico as a major disruptor

on the Brussels media scene. Interesting question. Just to go back a little bit, to say that Brussels, the Brussels media scene was a bit of a

yawn before Politico arrived is a tad unfair in that journalists went about their business,

which was decrypting the often complex EU dossier, making it

relevant and understandable for their readers. So they were doing what they were paid for. But yes,

10 years ago, along came Politico with its stated aim of wanting to sex up Brussels.

And a lot of people were sceptical,

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