Chüngeli breeder charm
Guest commentary The animal world shows how down-to-earth and at the same time lucrative social journalism can be today, writes Francis Müller.
Guest commentary The animal world shows how down-to-earth and at the same time lucrative social journalism can be today, writes Francis Müller.
In the colourful advertising market of Tierwelt magazine, you can find pretty much everything a reasonably civilized contemporary needs. The offer ranges from Kalashnikovs and castration pliers (for boars) to safety underwear and dental operations in Hungary to military kitchens and women from Poland looking to get married. While the media industry is experiencing epochal gnashing of teeth, "crisis" seems to be a foreign word at the Zofingen publishing house. Tierwelt is even recording growth rates - both in terms of advertising and copies sold. In 1993 the certified circulation was 62757 copies, in 2003 it was 71867; in 1992 Tierwelt had 142918 classified advertisements, ten years later almost 40,000 more. Founded in 1890, the title stands for a Switzerland beyond any urbanity. It is a manageable, archaic world in which the number of sheep or tractors one owns represents one's wealth. The magazine is published week after week by the Swiss Society for Small Animal Breeding. The association's spirit is also reflected in the editorial content. The sections are called "Rabbits", "Carrier Pigeons" or "Bird Breeding", and while society journalists are preparing to grow old as cab drivers or sausage stand operators, the paper reports cheerfully and successfully on topics such as "Teenage problems with barn swallows" or "My horse sweats so much! And when an article bears the headline "Aerial acrobats in action", it refers not to daredevil pilots, but to the aerobatic pigeon meeting in Perlen, Lucerne.
Despite such journalistic gems, the animal world is probably bought primarily because of the advertisements. A used car dealer from Oberaargau, who has since emigrated to Thailand, once confessed to me that nothing would work in his business without this organ, especially when it comes to the often tricky purchase of vehicles. So it is not only offered, but also sought: Teeth ("...but they have to be made of gold"), machine guns ("Looking for Uzi!") and partners ("Sandra, 41 and faithful, looking for animal-loving man to steal horses together"). No one seems to mind that Sandra's ad is between the offers for compressors and an emergency power system. After all, the world is full of contrasts.
Gold, weapons and love - these are the threads from which the big stories are woven. So it's thick mail that flutters through thousands of letterboxes every week. The magazine's own advertising puts it in a nutshell: "The animal world has a bird every week." A magazine that would have to be invented if it didn't already exist. But what creative mind would come up with something like that?
> Francis Müller is a freelance journalist and writes for the NZZ am Sonntag and the Financial Times, among others.
Times Germany.
In the colourful advertising market of Tierwelt magazine, you can find pretty much everything a reasonably civilized contemporary needs. The offer ranges from Kalashnikovs and castration pliers (for boars) to safety underwear and dental operations in Hungary to military kitchens and women from Poland looking to get married. While the media industry is experiencing epochal gnashing of teeth, "crisis" seems to be a foreign word at the Zofingen publishing house. Tierwelt is even recording growth rates - both in terms of advertising and copies sold. In 1993 the certified circulation was 62757 copies, in 2003 it was 71867; in 1992 Tierwelt had 142918 classified advertisements, ten years later almost 40,000 more. Founded in 1890, the title stands for a Switzerland beyond any urbanity. It is a manageable, archaic world in which the number of sheep or tractors one owns represents one's wealth. The magazine is published week after week by the Swiss Society for Small Animal Breeding. The association's spirit is also reflected in the editorial content. The sections are called "Rabbits", "Carrier Pigeons" or "Bird Breeding", and while society journalists are preparing to grow old as cab drivers or sausage stand operators, the paper reports cheerfully and successfully on topics such as "Teenage problems with barn swallows" or "My horse sweats so much! And when an article bears the headline "Aerial acrobats in action", it refers not to daredevil pilots, but to the aerobatic pigeon meeting in Perlen, Lucerne.
Despite such journalistic gems, the animal world is probably bought primarily because of the advertisements. A used car dealer from Oberaargau, who has since emigrated to Thailand, once confessed to me that nothing would work in his business without this organ, especially when it comes to the often tricky purchase of vehicles. So it is not only offered, but also sought: Teeth ("...but they have to be made of gold"), machine guns ("Looking for Uzi!") and partners ("Sandra, 41 and faithful, looking for animal-loving man to steal horses together"). No one seems to mind that Sandra's ad is between the offers for compressors and an emergency power system. After all, the world is full of contrasts.
Gold, weapons and love - these are the threads from which the big stories are woven. So it's thick mail that flutters through thousands of letterboxes every week. The magazine's own advertising puts it in a nutshell: "The animal world has a bird every week." A magazine that would have to be invented if it didn't already exist. But what creative mind would come up with something like that?
> Francis Müller is a freelance journalist and writes for the NZZ am Sonntag and the Financial Times, among others.
Times Germany.
