The European Publishers Council EPC today presented the "Hamburg Declaration on the Protection of Intellectual Property" to the EU Commission. The declaration calls on governments worldwide to support the copyright of authors, publishers and broadcasters on the Internet, said EPC President Francisco Pinto Balsemão. In the meantime, 148 German publishers have already signed up to the declaration presented by six Hamburg publishers in Hamburg on June 8, 2009. With the signatures of the EPC and WAN-IFRA, the declaration, which was initially launched regionally, has developed into a significant international initiative.
EPC President Francisco Pinto Balsemão, CEO of the Portuguese media group Impresa, signed the declaration on behalf of the Council's 27 member publishers. Association President Gavin O'Reilly, CEO of the Irish media group Independent News and Media, signed on behalf of the more than 3,000 publishers' associations and media companies from more than 120 countries that are members of WAN-IFRA.
According to Presseportal, the signatories included Michael Ringier (Ringier, Switzerland), Frederic Aurand (Groupe Hersant, France), Oscar Bronner (Der Standard, Austria), Bernd Buchholz (Gruner + Jahr, Germany), Hubert Burda (Burda Media, Germany), Mathias Döpfner (Axel Springer AG, Germany), Stefan von Holtzbrinck (Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, Germany), Patrick Morley (Telegraaf Media Group, Netherlands), James Murdoch (News Corporation Europe and Asia), The Viscount Rothermere (Daily Mail and General Trust, UK), Robert Thomson (Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal), Giorgio Valerio (RCS Quotidiani, Italy) and Christian Van Thillo (de Persgroep, Belgium).

While the European Publishers Council (EPC) today presented the EU Commission with the "Hamburg Declaration on the Protection of Intellectual Property", the tabloid News of the World went to great lengths to tap into intellectual property. Journalists from the newspaper are said to have hacked into the cell phone voicemails of celebrities from politics and show business on a grand scale in order to obtain confidential information through voice messages. This was reported by The Guardian newspaper on Thursday.
The publisher is said to have used a lot of money to cover up the illegal action. Nevertheless, Scotland Yard remained inactive after receiving information about the extent of the incident. The tabloid's publisher, News Group Newspaper, paid compensation to some of those affected. A total of one million pounds was set aside to settle the cases and keep the incidents secret, as the Guardian further reported.
In total, the journalists are said to have hacked into the mailboxes of up to 3,000 celebrities. The list of cell phones that were tapped is interesting. It ranges from Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and the current Mayor of London Boris Johnson to supermodel Elle MacPherson, singer George Michael and the now deceased British reality TV star Jade Goody.

The telecommunications provider VTX has been offering a program package with over 100 television channels since Thursday. The test phase for ADSL television starts today in Pully and in the Morgartenring district of Basel. This will last until the end of 2009 and is completely free of charge for customers in these regions. After the test phase, VTX intends to extend the service to other regions, according to the press portal.
If a device is connected between the VTX box and the TV, several programs can be recorded on several channels at the same time. The functions and a channel overview can be accessed via a four-language menu. A video-on-demand service is also offered. After the test phase, VTX plans to expand the service to other regions.
The VTX-Telecom Group is an independent telecommunications provider in the fixed network, mobile and Internet sectors and has 12 branches in Switzerland. The group employs almost 200 people.

Crossmotion was commissioned by Unique to develop a web-based training tool. The training includes interactive videos and visualizations with animations. The training concludes with an online test.
Every year from October to the following April, Unique's winter services team ensures that Zurich Airport can be kept operational at all times in the event of snowfall. To ensure that internal and external winter service employees can meet the safety requirements, traditional group training courses are held every year in late summer.
Crossmotion GmbH Media Engineering is a company for the development of cross-media communication tools with a focus on the moving image. This includes audiovisual media for corporate and marketing communication, for information and training purposes, for the visualization of processes with 2D and 3D animation, for websites with moving images and interactive web applications. Crossmotion also produces CD-ROMs, DVDs, streaming media and Flash. Its customers include companies from the financial services and industrial sectors.

The SRG Regional Council appointed the two interim directors on Thursday. Ueli Haldimann, currently Editor-in-Chief of Swiss Television SF, will become the new Director of Television at SF. Iso Rechsteiner will become Director of Swiss Radio DRS. Haldimann and Rechsteiner will take over on October 1. The two are part of a transitional solution. As part of the merger of television and radio - the media convergence project - a new so-called super director is to take over responsibility for television and radio from around mid-2010.

Ueli Haldimann has been working for SF for almost 20 years. He started his journalistic career as a freelance journalist and switched several times between print and TV journalism. He has worked for Swiss Television SF for almost 20 years, where he has been editor-in-chief for seven years. He initially took on the role on an interim basis after Filippo Leutenegger was dismissed by the then Director of Television Peter Schellenberg at the beginning of 2002. He has also been Deputy Director of Television since 2004.
Haldimann has worked for the Tages-Anzeiger, Bilanz and Weltwoche newspapers, among others, and joined Swiss television as Kassensturz editor.
In 1985, Haldimann joined Swiss television as an editor for "Kassensturz".
In 1994, he moved to the "SonntagsZeitung" as editor-in-chief. There he had to resign in the summer of 1997 after a scandal in connection with a misquoted statement by the then Zurich SVP National Councillor Christoph Blocher.
Haldimann had to stand trial twice for "Kassensturz" reports. The Federal Supreme Court sentenced him to a conditional fine in the case of a hidden camera used to expose irregularities in the insurance industry. The case is pending in Strasbourg. Last month, Haldimann was again on trial for undercover research. This involved reports on the subject of cosmetic surgery. The verdict in this case is not yet available.

Iso Rechsteiner joined SR DRS in 1994, when he started as an editor at the regional journal Ostschweiz. In 2001, he moved to the business editorial department, where he worked for five years, and became deputy head of the business editorial department. In 2006, he became head of the regional editorial department at SR DRS and since then has also been a member of the management team. He was also appointed Deputy Radio Director in April 2008.

The Internet is clearly the most important source of information for Swiss media professionals today. This is shown by a new study by the Institute for Applied Media Studies IAM at ZaHW and the communications agency Bernet_PR. The results were presented for the first time on Wednesday evening.
Over 95% of respondents said that their most important work tool today is the Internet. In the same survey 7 years ago, the figure was 87.5 percent. First and foremost, people want to find information or check facts online. Three quarters of respondents search the Internet for ideas for their own articles. One in two use it for comparison with other media.
E-mail and search engines are at the heart of Internet use. With 99.8 percent of mentions, Google is the clear favorite here. Only around one in four media professionals use Search.ch and not even one in ten search via Yahoo. The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is in fifth place, followed by company websites, fee-based databases and news portals.
For the first time, the study also asked about social networks. These are significantly less important. The importance of weblogs is declining.
If media professionals are looking for news, they prefer to click on the online edition of the Tages-Anzeiger. Nzz.ch, 20min.ch, Google News, the news agency SDA and the fee-based Swiss Media Service SMD ranked second to sixth.
The respondents largely agree that the Internet is also increasing the pressure to keep up to date and is having an ever greater impact on journalism. In the opinion of many interviewees, the interpretation of news is becoming more important than its procurement.
Almost 3,000 media professionals throughout Switzerland were surveyed for the representative study, of which around 23 percent responded.

In its 230th year, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung is undergoing a comprehensive overhaul in terms of content, design and page architecture. With the relaunch planned for September 23, 2009, the NZZ aims to respond even better to readers' usage habits, changes in the advertising market and the challenges posed by new information media. The relaunch is also intended to attract younger readers to the NZZ. According to an NZZ press release, this is also based on the findings of broad-based audience surveys.
The NZZ commissioned the Cologne-based design agency Meiré und Meiré as an external partner for the design. The design concept for the NZZ has been developed in collaboration with the project management team under Editor-in-Chief Markus Spillmann and NZZ Art Director Brigitte Meyer since March 2009 under the motto "Aesthetics for Substance". Fashionable gimmickry and fast-moving design interventions are avoided.
The redesign is combined with a new concept for the paper's architecture and page sequence. New sections, an upgraded stock market and opinion section as well as new supplements are elementary components together with a consistently pursued linking of the offer on NZZ Online.

The Neue Luzerner Zeitung is discontinuing publication of the weekly newspaper at the end of August. The decision was made for economic reasons. In a letter to the NLZ, the Obwalden government regrets the disappearance of the paper. It states that this decision will further centralize and thin out the press landscape.
The Neue Obwaldner Zeitung is now to publish one or two articles a week as a replacement, as they were previously printed in the Wochenblatt. Among other things, this also includes club announcements.

As of August 1, 2009, Claudio Lier will be in charge of dialog marketing at Assai Dialog + Digital. As a member of the management board, he will advise the agency's key clients. Claudio Lier replaces Karin Lang, who is returning to her former employer Publicis Dialog.
Claudio Lier worked in Switzerland for the agencies Wunderman and Contexta as well as on the client side for Orange. For Wunderman, he managed international mandates in Germany and Russia. His clients included Microsoft, Philip Morris International, HP, Procter & Gamble, Monster, Nokia and Swisslos.
Karin Lang is leaving the agency after almost four years of work, not least for personal reasons, and is returning to her former employer at Bellevue as Head of Consulting, as the agency writes in a press release.

The new Managing Director of the Swiss Press Association is Urs F. Meyer. He will take over from Hanspeter Kellermüller, who is moving to the NZZ Group, in October. The position was advertised publicly and the personnel committee, headed by Matthias Hagemann, carried out a selection process and examined several candidates in detail.
Meyer has many years of experience in association management. He headed the Bern office of the employers' association for several years and most recently worked for Suva as Public Affairs Manager.

The free newspaper 20 minutes in French-speaking Switzerland reduces its circulation during the summer vacations. According to Editor-in-Chief Philippe Favre, the newspaper from the Tamedia publishing house reduces its circulation every summer. This year, circulation will fall from around 237,000 to 200,000.
The paper from the Edipresse publishing house, on the other hand, is taking a summer break. The free newspaper Matin Bleu will not be published between July 20 and August 16.

The exhibition "Goodbye & Hello: In dialog with the afterlife" at the Museum of Communication in Bern was visited by over 26,000 people. This makes it the second most visited temporary exhibition in the history of the museum. The number of visitors was in line with expectations, the Museum of Communication announced on Thursday.
With 51,740 visitors, "Pictures that lie" remains the most visited exhibition to date. An exhibition about the manipulation of photographs and films. "Goodbye & Hello: In dialog with the afterlife" came to an end on Sunday after around eight months.