Overslept, messed up
Op-Ed: “Der Blick” Lost Its Future Because Too Many Art Lovers Were Meddling in Its Affairs, Says Peter Uebersax.
Guest commentary The Blick lost its future because too many aesthetes were stirring the pot, says Peter Uebersax As a newspaper man who still honors the tried and tested tabloid rules, today's Blick seems to me to be a journalistic disaster. The old tabloid aunt is no longer a NEWS-paper. It is a hodgepodge of prize competitions, people-allotria and politics that uses left-wing populism to implement a federal culture of envy. The only person who writes in the paper with wit and charm (albeit without any deeper meaning) is senior editor Jürg Ramspeck, soon to be 70. When I left 20 years ago, I left behind a tightly organized newspaper with a paid circulation of just under 400,000. What is left of that? Around 250,000 in circulation and a newspaper that rubs Blocher the wrong way with increasingly monotonous grumblings. Or organizes beauty contests for readers' dogs. Once upon a time, Blick grabbed hold where there was something to harvest - with peppery campaigns against our then disastrous DRS television. With doubts about the then equivalent of today's climate hype, forest dieback. Or with frenetic cheerleading for the best skiers in the world, Pirmin Zurbriggen & Co. Back then, Blick consisted of 70 percent hard, crisp news, 15 percent polemics and provocation and 15 percent sex. Blick made Marta Emmenegger a national figure. Her tips brought joy to traffic-calmed Swiss marital and other beds.
But various aesthetes stuck their fingers into the inheritance that I left behind at Ringier. Frank A. Meyer announced an editorial program for the "emancipation" of Blick. He described his ideal Blick reader as a truck driver who dips his croissant in his latte at the highway service station "and thinks about Europe", who looks for announcements of upcoming art exhibitions in the Blick culture section and generally yearns for a better world. As a "people's newspaper" (the word "tabloid" was out!), the ethically revamped Blick was intended to attract new readers.
Think again. Because this is exactly where his gaze began to plummet. It accelerated as its heart beat ever more to the left. What nobody at Ringier seemed to consider was that Blick is published in the most bourgeois country in Europe. The Swiss accept a cheeky, rude tabloid - a left-wing one annoys them.
When the readership figures and advertising volume of Blick go downhill, Ringier blames the free papers and the Internet. Blaming your own product is apparently not cool. And no one would admit that Ringier had a perfect defense weapon in its hand the moment free papers appeared - to turn Blick into a free paper as well.
The selection of the rapidly changing editors-in-chief was also a matter of sleep. The best man for the job once worked at Ringier, but had to emigrate to Switzerland. Peter Rothenbühler, successful editor-in-chief of Le Matin, would have managed to give Blick a future again.
Peter Uebersax, 81, was editor-in-chief of Blick from 1980-86. He lives in Herrliberg and southern Spain
But various aesthetes stuck their fingers into the inheritance that I left behind at Ringier. Frank A. Meyer announced an editorial program for the "emancipation" of Blick. He described his ideal Blick reader as a truck driver who dips his croissant in his latte at the highway service station "and thinks about Europe", who looks for announcements of upcoming art exhibitions in the Blick culture section and generally yearns for a better world. As a "people's newspaper" (the word "tabloid" was out!), the ethically revamped Blick was intended to attract new readers.
Think again. Because this is exactly where his gaze began to plummet. It accelerated as its heart beat ever more to the left. What nobody at Ringier seemed to consider was that Blick is published in the most bourgeois country in Europe. The Swiss accept a cheeky, rude tabloid - a left-wing one annoys them.
When the readership figures and advertising volume of Blick go downhill, Ringier blames the free papers and the Internet. Blaming your own product is apparently not cool. And no one would admit that Ringier had a perfect defense weapon in its hand the moment free papers appeared - to turn Blick into a free paper as well.
The selection of the rapidly changing editors-in-chief was also a matter of sleep. The best man for the job once worked at Ringier, but had to emigrate to Switzerland. Peter Rothenbühler, successful editor-in-chief of Le Matin, would have managed to give Blick a future again.
Peter Uebersax, 81, was editor-in-chief of Blick from 1980-86. He lives in Herrliberg and southern Spain
