NZZ on a tightrope walk

The NZZ wants to save a total of 21.1 million Swiss francs in 2003 and is cutting around 80 work units, according to an internal press release.27 people have already been made redundant and the majority of the cuts are to be made through staff turnover and reductions in workload. Although the NZZ itself is to remain a "good quality newspaper", the editorial output will have to be reduced. The ratio of editorial pages to advertising pages should now be 55 to 45 instead of 60 to 40 (which would have made the October 15 edition around seven pages of text thinner). The NZZ management is also aware that this is tantamount to a qualitative tightrope walk: the reactions of readers must be monitored, as subscription losses could "wipe out all calculations", it was noted. Media planner Ronny Schmid from the Konnex agency, on the other hand, considers the NZZ service reduction to be "marginal". "The reader won't notice," he says. The quality of the NZZ will not suffer as a result (mk).