A heart for members

Guest commentary Felix Wirz fears that the commitment of non-profit organizations will be at risk if press funding is withdrawn.
to submit a draft decree to the Federal Assembly or to submit a
measure to be taken. That's what the Parliament Act says. With the
press promotion, this principle seems to be reversed: in short
following the referral of the motion "Press promotion through participation in
the distribution costs", the Federal Council proposes that the
proposal. The fact that the unanimous Council of States and the majority of the
National Council referred the proposal is of no interest. The
The ball is back in Parliament's court.

The publisher's president has now also commented on the same issue.
Lebrument had his say - and turned out to be the elephant in the
china store. Publishers should focus on the indirect
press promotion and advocate a standardized
newspaper tariff system. The representatives of the
regional press will be grateful for these words from their association president.
have certainly "thanked" us.

It is the big publishers with their own distribution organizations
of course free to focus more strongly on their own sales channels.
to align. However, this is impossible for the member press. A
Swiss association is dependent on the fact that its
Members' magazine from Geneva to Rorschach and from Münstertal to
Porrentruy is delivered to the members' press. For this purpose, the member press is
nationwide distributor - and there is no such thing
currently only in the form of Swiss Post.

Without the current press subsidy, the shipping costs for the
membership press will more than double. They already account for around
half of the production costs and would be lost in the event of sharp price increases.
account for around two thirds of the costs. For a medium to large
nonprofit organization, this means that they have thousands of additional
members and donors would have to be recruited in order to
to compensate for additional costs.

The actual tasks of non-profit organizations would be to
short. This would also weaken the important functions of the
Member press. For example, the Institute for Communication and
Media Studies at the University of Bern in a recent
conducted on the membership press in Switzerland
found that almost two-thirds of the products sold in Switzerland
Member press meets the demand for linguistic integration
become. While the popular press as well as radio and television
are primarily geared to the respective language region, the
members' press to create a Swiss discourse. This causes
increased costs for editing, translation and printing, whereby the latter
generates considerable turnover in the printing plants of large publishing houses.

In order for the mostly donation-financed non-profit organizations to be able to
important tasks for society can continue to be performed are
They are dependent on continuing to make the member magazines a
to be able to send at a favorable rate.

Felix Wirz represents the interests of 30 non-profit organizations united in ig mitgliederpresse. ([email protected])