Solothurn: Shrunken press landscape receives support from foundation
The Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation funds an internship at the Solothurner Zeitung (SZ) and encourages journalists to participate in an «exchange semester» in Switzerland or abroad.
Annual grants totaling 200,000 francs are available for the projects, as Niklaus Studer, president of the board of trustees of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation, told the media in Solothurn on Thursday, according to SDA. The Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation has assets of 20 million Swiss francs. In 2009, it sold its majority stake in Vogt-Schild Medien (Solothurner Zeitung) to Peter Wanner’s AZ Medien AG.
The foundation will now fund an internship position at the SZ. Studer, chairman of the foundation’s board, emphasized that this position is intended solely for the SZ and will be created in addition to the positions within the entire AZ Media Group. In addition, a «Solothurn correspondent» will swap their job in the canton of Solothurn for six months with a media professional from Switzerland or abroad, as Foundation Board member and journalist Peter Rothenbühler explained. For the coming year, the foundation has made initial contacts with the newspaper Oberösterreichische Nachrichten in Linz, Austria. The offer is more generously funded than any journalism award in Switzerland, Rothenbühler said.
Promoting a Diverse Media Landscape in the Canton of Solothurn
A book series consisting of up to twelve volumes will address issues in journalism from both theoretical and practical perspectives, as announced by Roger Blum, a retired media professor from Bern and member of the foundation’s board of trustees. The call for proposals for the first two volumes will be issued shortly.
The purpose of the foundation is to promote a diverse, regionally balanced media landscape in the canton of Solothurn that is committed to liberal ideals. In addition to the internship program, the correspondent, and the book series, it may also launch other projects. Since the sale of the Solothurner Zeitung, the long-established newspaper has seen job cuts. In addition, its rival, the Solothurner Tagblatt, ceased publication. Its publisher, Tamedia, shut it down, thereby ending the newspaper war in the Mittelland.
