MPJ does not ask for money. It asks for journalism.

No. I'Max earns nothing from hosting your news site, does not sell your data to third parties through cookies and has no commercial partner inside the program.

Your outlet's details sit in the I'Max media database, where press officers can look them up — as they did before MPJ existed. The company's gain is indirect: the more serious outlets there are, the more channels its clients have for earning coverage without interfering with the editorial process.

Any financial activity involving MPJ — and none is on the horizon today — would require signing a new contractual agreement with the publisher.

There is no minimum. The audience can be small — expanding it is exactly what the program is for.

There is a maximum, but only at the door: an average of up to 7 million pageviews a month, measured by Similarweb over the previous 12 months. Once the contract is signed there is no cap: the site can grow as far as it can and stays covered by the program.

The right question is how many points. The contract measures what you give back through the MPJ Output Index: an average of 10 points a month over the last three months, never fewer than 6 points in any single month, and at least 6 distinct original pieces every month.

A reported news story is worth 1 point, a feature 2, a special report 3, and there are +1 bonuses for reporting from the scene, a proven scoop and your own video. In practice, eight news stories and one feature close out the month. The full table is on this page.

Original means original. Reproducing wire copy or press releases does not count — the system compares your content against what is circulating on other sites to work out who published first.

The site's audience does not change the target: it only sets what the charge is in a month when the target is missed, and it is measured by the Google Analytics the program sets up on the site.

There are three kinds of failure, and they carry different consequences.

Producing below the index. The first time, the publisher is notified and has 30 days to put it right, at no charge whatsoever. Miss that window — or repeat it within the next 12 months — and an invoice arrives for the value of the service that month, according to the audience bracket:

If it goes on for another month, the charge becomes monthly and the publisher is notified to migrate their own content within 90 days. Late invoices carry a 2% penalty and 1% monthly interest, and access can be suspended after 5 days.

Missing the annual obligations. Joint stories and courses are counted per 12-month cycle. If any are missing, there are 60 days to put it right — and the extra time does not count against the next cycle. After that comes a formal warning; falling short in two cycles in a row allows termination, with 45 days to migrate.

Breaching the ethics of the profession. Here the decision is not the company's: a panel of invited journalists sits as a board to judge the case. The board can clear the publisher, issue a warning or rule that the site leaves the project, with 90 days to migrate the content.

No — and this is the question that comes up most.

There is a bank of material in press-release form available to anyone who wants it, including notes on which subjects tend to draw an audience, suggested headlines and a picture library. It is an offer, not an obligation: the journalist uses it if and when they want. And a published press release does not count as original content toward what you give back.

The layout is built for your outlet. The I'Max team develops it from your visual identity, within the platform's technical, security and performance standards — it is not picking an off-the-shelf theme. After sign-off, changes are requested through the support channels.

There are fixed blocks for branded content, classifieds — which in regional media sometimes pay better than programmatic — and public notices, for councils that spend on them.

Building features outside the technology package, and any extra services, fall outside the scope and become a conversation about price, under a separate agreement. The program's advice is to take it in stages: come in, get a feel for it, then plan what comes next.

Installing third-party software or code on the servers is not allowed, nor is having your own developers working on the site. What runs there is code produced or certified by the I'Max technology team, and the list of approved tools is an annex to the contract.

The CMS is our own, built to manage posts and the banners that do not come from programmatic platforms. It is demonstrated in the pre-selection meetings and, before signing, you get a test site to post, edit and schedule on as much as you like — that is how you find out whether the tool suits your routine.

WordPress is not accepted on the program's servers, for performance and cybersecurity reasons.

A paywall, no — not at this stage. The program is aimed at sites that currently leave their content open on the web. Building an access control that each publisher can switch on and off is on the roadmap.

A newsletter, in part. The layouts have subscriber capture fields and there is an API to send those subscribers to the usual platforms, such as Mailchimp and Substack — that is included. Producing the newsletter through the I'Max system would be a separate paid service.

The package covers setting up Google Ads and Criteo, arranged so that the money lands straight in the publisher's account. I'Max only validates it and keeps an eye on the technology.

On top of that, every site has a way to run advertising you sold yourself, and publishing that ad is as simple as publishing a story. The program keeps none of that money.

The package creates accounts on your site's domain. Using them is optional — your e-mail can stay on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 without affecting the site. Whoever takes them up agrees to the following:

• E-mail is delivered over IMAP, to set up in Outlook, Thunderbird or on your phone. There is no webmail.
• The settings are as strict as they come: 2048-bit DKIM, TLS 1.3, DMARC p=reject and SPF moderation. In practice, only some e-mail marketing services are compatible.
• Mass sending from the e-mail account itself is not allowed, blind-copied sends above all, on pain of suspension.
• There is antivirus and antispam on the way in and on the way out, and the system files press releases into a folder of their own.
• Up to 2 accounts per site, 20 GB each. Extra accounts are contracted separately, at a price on request.

It is a piece reported jointly by journalists from two outlets in the network. It runs on the host's site, crediting both journalists and stating plainly that it was produced with the other outlet. That is two per annual cycle, always as the host.

The point is to get the publisher out of isolation. A local site tends to operate alone, and working together is the cheapest way to widen coverage, split the cost of expensive reporting and get in front of somebody else's audience.

Whoever hosts it is whoever scores. The story counts for the host, both on the index and against the obligation. Being a guest neither scores nor replaces your own obligation to host — but you may republish the piece on your site, with credit and a link to the original, and it is not plagiarism. MPJ can introduce interested outlets to each other without becoming responsible for the partnership.

Yes, two a year. At least one journalist on the masthead has to show they took two courses, workshops or training programs per annual cycle, of at least four hours each.

Fact-checking, data journalism, investigation, journalist safety, ethics, managing and sustaining an outlet and responsible use of AI all count. Free courses from Abraji and from other associations, professional bodies and universities count, as do the training sessions MPJ runs itself — which is to say, meeting this requirement does not have to cost money.

Proof is the certificate or a statement from the institution, sent in before the cycle ends. A course of another kind may be accepted, with prior approval. Sharing what you learned with the network is encouraged, not required.

If leaving is your decision: tell us whenever you like. The program has up to 30 days to open an extraction API with the whole archive — text, photos, video links, sections and tags. There is no delivery on physical media, and the content is erased from the servers 90 days after the notice.

If the program decides: notice is 90 days for a site already published, and you use that time to download everything. Where the exit follows a failure to hold up your end, notice drops to 45 days, without prejudice to charges already issued. A site not yet published is shut down on the spot.

In every case the layout does not travel: the content migrates, not the design or the code. Bringing the site back up somewhere else will take new hosting and, most likely, a developer.