Do not cut down the tree that bears fruit

In his article "Making room for something new", Christoph J. Walther recommends that the owners of SDA close the news agency. He justifies this with technical developments and the associated new communication possibilities. This purely technocratic view of the former SDA IT developer clearly falls short of the mark. It fails to recognize that the agency has long since adapted to the new developments and does not define its performance in terms of technical possibilities.

It is undisputed: The media industry is undergoing an irreversible transformation process. No one around the world knows exactly where the journey is heading. People everywhere are looking for solutions on how to transfer successful business models from the analog to the digital era. There doesn't seem to be a silver bullet, and no one has yet found the egg of Columbus.

Journalistic content is under particular pressure because it has always only been able to reach readers so cheaply thanks to advertising revenue. Now that advertising funds are flowing more sparingly, the production of content must become more cost-effective.

And because readership loyalty is declining at the same time, editorial teams are making greater efforts to produce exclusive content without neglecting the basic service. In addition, editorial teams will have to think more carefully in future about which content they play in which channel. In short, everyone will have to do more with less.

It is important to join forces, as was the case at the end of the 19th century when news agencies were founded for this reason. In Switzerland in particular, the national news agency is still solely in the hands of the media. That is why the owners will not consider closing the agency, but will think about how to make even better use of the established structure in the future.

Christoph J. Walther is right that the PR departments of government and business no longer have to go through the news agencies to reach the editorial offices. And he is also right that PR writing must be reworked into news writing. In addition, advertising content must be separated from news content, additional research must be carried out and categorization must be undertaken. First of all, of course, a selection is made as to whether the message is relevant enough to be processed editorially.

Of course, each editorial team can do this independently. In a fairly large proportion of cases, every editorial team will come to the same conclusions. And this is exactly where the agency comes into play. It handles the selection for the basic supply centrally, which would otherwise have to be decentralized. The agency is used to quickly sifting through a large amount of information and preparing it in a customer-oriented way. It can thus relieve the customer editorial teams of a lot of work.

It also handles monitoring, alerting and verification. Today, editorial teams no longer suffer from too little information, but from being inundated with it. In order to work more efficiently, they need independent guidance, and this is what the agency offers.

The importance of the agency as a technical enabler is low today, developer Christoph J. Walter is right. On the other hand, the importance of the agency as a source of high-quality content has increased. Today, the agency is paid for its journalism, not for IT. However, it is also suffering from constantly declining revenues and the mandate to offer equivalent services at the same price in three national languages. The small Swiss market has long ceased to support this.

The entire Swiss media system benefits from the fact that SDA still provides this public service. The supply of newspapers, online portals, radio and television stations with information from Switzerland and abroad, the uninterrupted basic supply of news that enables an exchange across the language regions, is the agency's service today. If the public sector supports them in this and thus helps the media to provide this service more cheaply, this is a promising idea for the future and not a backward-looking demand. It is indirect media promotion that benefits everyone and is important in a directly democratic country.

As mentioned, the transformation process of the media is not an isolated Swiss phenomenon. It can be observed to varying degrees all over the world. No media system has reacted by closing down the news agencies owned by the media. Rather, the systems are strengthening the agencies and giving them new tasks, whether as an exchange and documentation platform or as a supplier of finished products.

If Switzerland were to take a different path, it would be a special case. Not a big, old, sick tree would be felled, as Christoph J. Walther writes, but a healthy tree that can still bear a lot of fruit. Fruit that the editorial offices can obtain and process at low cost. So that their specialties taste good to readers, regardless of the channel.

Bernard Maissen, Editor-in-Chief SDA and member of the Federal Media Commission