To the point: station board
Jacques Pilet, founder and former editor-in-chief of Le Nouveau Quotidien and L’Hebdo, shared some thoughts in an interview with bazonline.ch this week that should give us journalists pause for thought.
"We should ask ourselves whether we still really understand our craft. Are we still up to the mark? Are we still capable of surprising? I'm not so sure. We are often too close to the political leaders. We've started to speak the same language as them. Politics has completely hijacked the media. We behave like stationmasters. We ask X and Y and we write what they say. We ask for opinions, just like the stationmaster waves trains through. By doing that, we don't make anyone angry anymore, but we don't inspire anyone either." Jacques Pilet is talking about political journalism here, but in my view it applies to all sectors and all media. An armada of communication obstructionists makes sure that only what has been approved in countless conferences is published. And what comes out then? Soft-boiled, boring stories that are of no interest to anyone and that, incidentally, no one reads. Anyone who thinks that we as a specialist medium do not have this problem is mistaken. Countless discussions have to be held constantly in order to defend one's own text. In anticipatory obedience, the interviewee or interview partner wants to delete or at least weaken everything that would give a text or a title a bit of pizzazz. If then finally the PR guy looks at it, then good night.
Most of our readers are communication specialists. So they should actually know how good communication works. It has to be surprising and interesting, and (very important!) it has to make people want to read it. Otherwise it can't do anything. That's logical. But ohalätz! As soon as it's about your own communication, your own company or your own product, things sound completely different. "Couldn't this be worded more positively?" or "I'd rather leave this sentence out".
This reminds me of my advertising past, where some junior product manager found an idea "actually great", but at the same time demanded that the logo should be at least twice as big and the whole text should come across more positively. With the result that a good idea was killed.
Today, I don't see myself as a station manager who waves the trains through, I also sometimes show the red ladle.
Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
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