The tabloid dogma

Daily press Despite massive competition from the free press, Blick and Le Matin are sticking with the tabloid format. The tabloid caused a stir, particularly among the Anglo-Saxon quality papers, when they adopted the compact formats of the tabloid press, but their circulations skyrocketed. In the meantime, the free press has taken over the small format here in Switzerland - free and tabloid are almost synonymous with the public. Blick and Le Matin, the only paid titles to have adopted the Anglo-Saxon trend, would actually have to rethink their format in order to remain formally distinguishable from the free competition, but Ringier and Edipresse are not willing to shake the tabloid dogma. "I never want to go back to the old format," says Le Matin editor-in-chief Peter Rothenbühler. He attributes the fact that his paper has only lost 30,000 readers in the face of around 600,000 free readers in French-speaking Switzerland (including home-grown readers with Le Matin Bleu) to the layout of his title. "You don't succeed because of the format, but because of the content." Ringier Switzerland boss Daniel Pillard (himself editor-in-chief of Le Matin between 1999 and 2001) also wants to keep Blick in its current format. For Rothenbühler, it is clear that Blick wants to blame the "huge mistakes in content and layout" on the format issue, among other things.
René Worni