To the point: Blocked future

Of course, it's not about professional articles, but about PR texts, wrapped tightly in the cloak of the editorial, protected with the cap of the honest, so that no one notices what it's really about: Native Advertising. One of the inquirers made a special effort and offered "topic-relevant guest article publications for a one-time payment", for which "no reference to advertising is allowed". Rejected.

Journalism still packs a punch. When advertising is no longer appreciated and is blocked hard, packaging it in ostensibly un-zoned reporting seems to be an attractive way to place messages. Whether and how such contaminated text material actually leads to sales of anything remains to be seen. It destroys the reputation of established media in no time at all. And the brazen attempts to undermine the perception barrier of readers (and media makers!) are increasing, also in impudence.

PR and advertising are under pressure: How to place messages and sell goods of all kinds when advertising is explicitly not wanted? Journalism is under pressure: How to produce and sell well-researched articles when advertising is explicitly not wanted? Readers don't want online advertising. But they also don't want to pay for high-quality, in-depth information. Print advertising is becoming too expensive for most advertisers. Crowdfunding or sponsoring only work in individual cases. So where should and where can the journey go?

In the past, readers read the part of a newspaper or magazine that interested them - and were not bothered by unread articles. Today, readers have the claim that everything they buy with a newspaper or magazine is of the highest interest to them. If it isn't, the subscription is canceled and the magazine is no longer purchased. Too little utility value. People want individual articles that really make a difference, rather than an entire issue. The idea of a customizable medium that everyone can put together themselves could have helped here. But that didn't really work either. Readers have to invest work in selecting their own reading material, and a print version of such an individualized edition is simply not feasible. Perhaps the model of the Toggenburger Tagblatt is viable: next year, subscribers will be able to choose between two newspapers, either for the complete edition with the cover section and Ostschweiz-Bund or just for the regional section - at a lower price.

For years, the question has been the same everywhere: How can we retain our readers with increasing quality and service? And with fewer staff, shrinking budgets and shrinking margins? Ad blockers and bans are certainly the wrong way to achieve more quality for the reader. A "pay barrier" also falls down ungraciously between text and reader like a guillotine.

Media makers should ask themselves: How is it that a customer goes to Migros and pays for goods at the checkout as a matter of course - and that the same customer goes to our websites, consumes an article and quietly disappears again? We have bred this self-evidently free mentality for ourselves. But that doesn't mean we have to live with it forever, like an incurable disease. Publishers, media companies, and journalists must therefore make the clear decision to no longer sequester monetary value in the consumer orbit of their recipients, but to once again create a market for journalistic products, with value and countervalue.

Clearly declared advertising also has its place in this market; it is the basis for financing journalistic services. Readers must once again become aware that it takes a lot of brains and commitment, money and energy to produce high-quality content that informs, classifies, questions, explains and links facts together.

Of course, every Por tal today provides news from all over the world, from Bluewin to Xing. But that's just regurgitated standard gruel, not the basis for clear, sharpened thinking. If media companies do not succeed in winning back the trust and affection of their customers and convince them of the high value of fact classification, Amazon, Apple, Google or Facebook will take over news distribution. "Small talk in the operating room leads to more wound infections," a recent study by the Inselspital in Bern found. And the eternally same news salad on the Internet leads to intellectual indigestion.

If advertising is no longer allowed to do what advertising can do - namely, (re)finance - in the future there will only be department stores a la Blendle, where all the media houses of a country (or even the world) hawk their products, from text to infographics to film. Here, readers will find everything they want: perishable goods for quick consumption and the timeless classic, budget articles and journalistic gems. Producers and readers don't know each other. And payment is made at the checkout. In cash.

Anne-Friederike Heinrich, Editor in Chief
[email protected]