New Basel online medium takes shape as "Bajour
A new online publication in Basel, previously announced, is slowly taking shape under the name Bajour. An office has been in operation since the beginning of the month. Four journalists have been hired, and the publication’s first in-house panel discussion will be held in a week. The online publication, which is free to read, is funded by a foundation.
The logo of the new Basel online medium Bajour. According to BZ it is said to have been created by Hinderling Volkart.
After the end for the Basler Daily News last November, the regional media landscape remains in motion. Announced in February and headed up by Hansi Voigt (ex-20 minutes) and Matthias Zehnder (Ex-BZ), the new online medium is now taking on its first recognizable contours.
Manuel Bertschi, president of the association Medienzukunft as a sponsor, outlined organizational, personnel and financial key data in an interview with Persönlich.com tweeted on Tuesday. He himself is a lawyer at the Kellerhals Carrard law firm.
Known names
Since August 1, the editorial and management teams have been working in their own office in Basel's Markthalle. It is precisely there that a panel discussion on the subject of school education is announced next Tuesday, behind which the new medium stands. With the first own event the name becomes public: "Bajour", which alludes to Basel and "à jour".
The permanent editorial team currently consists of four people, all with experience in regional journalism, namely at Daily News and BZ BaselNaomi Gregoris, Andrea Fopp, Daniel Faulhaber and Samuel Hufschmid. Martina Rutschmann is also mandated for podiums. According to Bertschi, the team will grow.
The managing director is Sabrina Oberländer, previously Head of Communications Public Exhibitions Basel at the MCH Group. She was the spokesperson for the once nationally relevant Muba, which saw its derniere in February. The focus of Bajour meanwhile, is regional but cross-border, hence the French appeal.
Hope for state funds
As a cooperation partner, Bertschi names the FCB magazine Red blue and the science magazine Higgs.ch. The basis for this is the nonprofit platform Wepublish, which will soon be used to exchange and curate content in a technically simple way. Hansi Voigt is also involved in this project: He initiated it.
The conspicuously inconspicuous appearance of Bajour contrasts with the hype surrounding other media projects. According to Bertschi, the ball is being kept emphatically flat in order to keep the pressure of expectations within bounds. There is no fixed start date; the project is beginning fluidly - even the website is not yet ready. In the course of the fall," he says, "things will get underway.
Take your time Bajour thanks to start-up funding from the Foundation for Media Diversity, which will support the project over the next three years with a cost ceiling of one million francs per year. These funds ultimately come from the former Daily News-patron Beatrice Oeri.
The new medium is to survive free of advertising thanks to further foundations and member contributions from the Medienzukunft association. "In the longer term" hopes Bajour according to Bertschi, on the state, on "public funding. The realization is spreading that online media should also be supported directly, but a legal basis must first be created for this. "Until that happens, foundation funding will serve as a stopgap. (SDA)
