To the point: Review
Before the summer break, here’s a brief, incomplete—but all the more subjective—look back at the past first half of the year.
January. Bankruptcy: Radio 105 ceases operations. Squabble: Colette Gradwohl resigns as editor-in-chief of the Landbote due to differing ideas about its future development. Innovation: The news portal Watson goes live.
February. Victory: Schawinski wins bidding war for Radio 105. Future: Veit Dengler, CEO of the NZZ Media Group, invests in journalism and evaluates expansion into German-speaking countries.
April. Reanimation: PubliGroupe sells Publicitas to the German company Aurelius. The company intends to focus on digital business in the future and is divesting itself of traditional advertising sales. What lasts a long time ...: Tamedia pulls up the paywall. Cosmetics: Markus Somm now also acts as publisher of the Basler Zeitung. As expected: Ringier secures a majority stake in Le Temps.
May. Rounding off: The St. Galler Tagblatt and the Neue Luzerner Zeitung become wholly owned by NZZ. The Zurich media group takes over the shares of PubliGroupe, which had announced its intention to sell its shares in newspaper publishers some time ago. Plans: Tamedia and Swisscom to buy PubliGroupe
June. Quality: Veit Dengler backs up his words with action: The NZZ strengthens its editorial team with several weighty new additions: Colette Gradwohl, Peer Teuwsen, Balz Bruppacher and Peter Sennhauser move to Zurich. Jeroen van Rooijen returned to the NZZ a few weeks ago. Michael Fleischhacker, former editor-in-chief of Die Presse in Austria and one of the most prominent journalists in the neighboring country, has also been working for the NZZ for a few weeks. He is overseeing the project to expand the language-regional offering in Austria.
Flop: Rolf Bollmann's move to the Funke Media Group falls through. Bollmann cites family reasons. Iron Foot Bollmann also causes a stir in Switzerland: Together with Markus Somm and Christoph Blocher, he acquires one third each of the Basler Zeitung from Medienvielfalt Holding. Reorganization: The Zurich media company Ringier reduces its management board to four members. Florian Fels, CEO Publishing, leaves the company. The former Ringier COO Michael Voss additionally takes over the Publishing division.
I wish all Werbewoche readers a wonderful vacation season. Enjoy a few carefree days!
Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]
