Basler Zeitung: Wagner promises journalistic independence

The editorial team of the Basler Zeitung (BaZ) met with Wagner on Tuesday morning for a discussion, after having posed questions and demands and requested answers in an open letter on Monday. Wagner told the SDA news agency that Blocher was providing "purely industrial" advice with his Robinvest AG and was not influencing newspaper content. The BZM printing center needs more capacity utilization, and the subsidiary Birkhäuser + GBC wants to move into lucrative niches, which is where the consultancy comes in.
His interest as a publisher is to achieve a "respectable return" in order to give the recently loss-making company a future. Wagner did not want to disclose any details; budgeting has not yet been completed. No current profit figures are available due to the changeover from mid-year to year-end closing. Ownership has remained unchanged since the BZM takeover in February: He holds a quarter of the holding company, Tito Tettamanti three. Because nothing has changed, he sees no reason to question Editor-in-Chief Markus Somm, as the editorial team is now demanding. He has already appeared before the editorial team. (What Somm is said to have said about his role and the future of the Baz can be seen below. Tagi article to be taken).
Wagner sees the furor following an article in the NZZ am Sonntag on the Blocher mandate as an attack on the BaZ: if the BaZ model of an independent regional daily newspaper is successful, the shell and group models of other publishers are wrong. BaZ was now "confronted with suspicions", but was providing evidence to the contrary on a daily basis. Wagner explicitly denied that Christoph Blocher was exerting any influence on BaZ. He said that anyone who found this to be the case should please prove it and contact him, Wagner, then he would act as a publisher who takes his responsibility seriously.

Editors demand guarantees
However, the BaZ editorial team announced in the afternoon that it still had "serious reservations" about the Blocher firm's consultancy mandate. The meeting with Wagner and Somm had not been able to dispel these concerns, it said in a communiqué. In a new letter, the editorial team had asked Wagner to "terminate the consultancy mandate immediately and to publicly guarantee that Christoph Blocher is not involved in our company in any way". The editorial team considers the relationship of trust with Somm to be disturbed, but will nevertheless seek a discussion with him.
The letter to the publisher was approved by an editorial meeting by 64 votes to 3, according to the statement. In the communiqué, the editorial team also referred to reactions from the public, which were "massive". Numerous BaZ readers had canceled their subscriptions. Meanwhile, readers' letters columns and online pages are also full of comments. The writer Guy Krneta has launched a homepage appeal for an independent newspaper with the title "Save Basel!" According to the BaZ editorial team, over 4000 people have signed so far.