The desert is alive!

Once and for all: let the devil take the general cultural pessimism of the media industry! Fortunately, it is broken again and again when personalities bravely stand up and speak plainly because they have thought about it beforehand. Or - even better - do something that "one" didn't expect, something crazy, as unthinkable as possible. (And if it's politically incorrect, all the better ...)

Prize to Markus Somm, the Swiss editor-in-chief with the best nerves. Ever since he took over the Basler Zeitung, I've been curious about this paper again. More than a handful of colleagues, including brilliant ones, have run away from him because they jumped to conclusions about Somm's working and communication behavior based on his political paper form. I don't even want to know how many nasty little intrigues are behind all the "exclusive" stories that are gleefully spread in the hostile Zurich papers. They are all based on the left-wing journalistic mainstream's claim to infallibility and its irrefutable convictions: A liberal, a right-wing intellectual even, cannot be good or interesting journalism at all. Markus Somm is trying to oxygenate his editorial team by appointing an interesting newcomer by the name of Claudio Zanetti to a key position. It's an experiment, a risk as far as I'm concerned. But something like that has to be allowed, because it's smarter to take a risk now and then than to always produce "more of the same". I'm skeptical too, but let this Zanetti write his first pieces first.

Prize to Constantin Seibt, who surprised us the day after Labor Day with the announcement of his own blog on Newsnet and a brilliant launch production (blog.tagesanzeiger.ch/ deadline). Seibt is one of those print journalists for whom there is no need to fear for the future of journalism, because he is a lateral thinker, bulky, surprising and never boring. His "15 theses on journalism in the 21st century" are sometimes caustic ("We have sold our habits so far"), and sometimes downright spot-on ("Good manners and efficiency are deadly.") And he has recipes, this Seibt. The most obvious one for me: "Style is one of the last taboos and one of the great untapped resources in journalism. " Yet the tone of a story is half the message - and the tone of the majority of all newspaper stories is the same. And leaves the same monochrome impression - no matter what the journalist is writing about. (The content of these articles is then very similar to the joke about the hair-cutting helmet, where the inventor was asked: "But aren't heads different sizes?" To which he replied: "Yes, but only the first time.")

Prize to Heribert Prantl, the former public prosecutor and judge who is now a member of the editorial board of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. His new book impresses with its crystal-clear logic and the great optimism based on it ("Die Welt als Leitartikel: Zur Zukunft des Journalismus", Picus Verlag Vienna). Prantl predicts a bright future for quality journalism - not because quality journalists like him like to hear it so much, but because it is actually logical. According to Prantl, the core competence of quality journalism is to provide help in categorizing the multiplication of facts that has been brought about by the Internet. His credo is: "The big question is not how to generate clicks, reach and circulation. The big question is: How do you create trust? Then clicks, reach and circulation will follow. " Of course, this requires journalists who achieve specialist status by concentrating on certain core areas (dossiers) and are therefore able to gain the trust of their customers. And it requires publishers who share this conviction and invest in quality instead of promoting text engineering, which only produces yard goods anyway, for which no one will want to pay sooner or later. Somm, Seibt, Prantl - three names in one week. Exciting deeds and words - and all for a supposedly dead sport like print journalism! Walt Disney was right after all: the desert is alive!