[2] As a child Servan-Schreiber aspired to become a psychoanalyst but, being born into a family of journalists went into that profession.

[5][6] He first wrote for Echos, which had been co-founded by his father, followed by L'Express which had been founded by his brother Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber.

[4][3] Having experience of reading American news magazines from a period spent teaching at Stanford University Servan-Schreiber worked with his brother to transform L'Express into a similar publication, the first of its kind in France.

[4][3] Servan-Schreiber would remain a director of L'Expansion for 27 years, and expand it to several foreign editions.

[4] He was the owner of La Vie Éco, a Moroccan newspaper, from 1994 to 1997, having acquired a special exemption from that nation's foreign ownership rules via Moroccan prime minister Abdellatif Filali.

[4][8] Servan-Schreiber took over Psychologies in 1997, and sold it to the Lagardère Group in 2008 having increased its circulation from 75,000 to 350,000 to become the second best-selling women's monthly in France.