Free newspapers across Europe are struggling to survive due to the weak advertising business. According to industry observers such as Piet Bakker, Professor of Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam, circulation has fallen by ten percent and dozens of titles have been discontinued. While the print market in general is suffering from the economic crisis, free titles have been particularly hard hit by the decline in advertising orders.
However, this does not apply to Switzerland. Free titles have not been hit harder by the crisis in this country. The decline in advertising is even more moderate for free newspapers than for paid newspapers, said Hannes Zaugg, head of the Swiss Association of Free Newspapers (VSGZ), when asked by Pressetext. Newspapers with many image advertisements are particularly affected by the slump - but these tend to be paid newspapers, Zaugg continued.

Since June 2009, Andreas Hildenbrand, most recently Head of Communication
of the Swiss Life Group, as co-owner and partner of the Lemongrass Communications team. After working for agencies and companies, the 42-year-old held various management positions in the communications department of Credit Suisse Group from 1999, most recently as deputy head of communications until the end of 2002. Andreas Hildenbrand graduated from the University of St. Gallen with a degree in economics (lic. oec. HSG) and completed training as a federally certified PR consultant.

Lemongrass Communications
The Zurich agency Lemongrass Communications, which emerged from Rhomberg Mari Schmid Partners in 2007, now employs Karin Rhomberg, Karin Mari, Cornelia Schmid and Andreas Hildenbrand as partners and Regula Arrigoni as senior consultant. The agency specializes in corporate communications, transaction and financial communications, litigation and crisis PR, sponsoring and event PR, publications and ghostwriting, reputation management and coaching.

LZ Medien Holding opened its new media center in Lucerne on Friday.
opened. The rebuilt and newly constructed building houses the publishing house, administration, editorial office
and prepress of the Neue Luzerner Zeitung, Publicitas and the
Television Tele 1 with 400 employees. It cost 30 million francs.

Following the resignation of SF Director Ingrid Deltenre, the future of SRG Director General Armin Walpen is now also being discussed. The latter, as well as his deputy Daniel Eckmann, will step down in 2010, writes the Sonntag newspaper. The Board of Directors may decide on the future of SRG's top management as early as June 22, 2009. According to an article in the Sonntagszeitung, Gilles Marchand, head of French-speaking Swiss television, is being discussed as an internal candidate. The current DRS editor-in-chief Rudolf Matter is also being considered as a possible radio and TV director. However, these two candidates may not convince the Board of Directors. The favorites are Axpo boss Heinz Karrer and ex-Swisscom boss Jens Alder. However, the SRG offer is unlikely to be lucrative enough for either of them.

There are certain decisions that you make - under certain circumstances - for life: building your own home, starting a family and so on. Now another one has been added: Playboy subscriber yes or no. Anyone who is prepared to enter into a permanent alliance with the Playboy bunny can secure the erotic publication for life for just under 500 euros. Provided, of course, that the publisher outlives its readership. A loophole remains open to subscribers. Anyone who has grown tired of the men's magazine can still unsubscribe after two years.
You can register online at Bunnystore.com/subscription. And once again, those who decide quickly will benefit. The first ten subscribers will receive the magazine personally from a real Playmate.

At its meeting on June 6, 2009, the Central Committee of Comedia discussed the events at Tamedia. The media union once again protested against the mass dismissals, the disregard for employee rights and the wage cuts for newspaper staff. The dismissals of staff representatives are also condemned. The International Labor Organization (ILO) will discuss the lack of protection against dismissal for employee representatives in Switzerland next week in Geneva, according to a press release issued on Saturday.
Comedia is also calling on the publishing house to use last year's profits "for a decent treatment of the employees". The union is providing a "fighting fund" for all actions against these redundancies, the press release continues. On Save-the-tagi.ch and Lohnabbau.ch you can show solidarity with the employees of Tagesanzeiger and the newspaper publishers and support the protest.

Radio Argovia once again invited its listeners to a birthday party this weekend. Despite rain and stormy gusts of wind, around 60,000 guests celebrated the 19th anniversary of the Aargau local radio station, which included performances by musicians such as Seven and Stress.

Ringier Print Adligenswil commissions a new newspaper production plant after a project lasting almost two years. The new machine has a capacity of three million newspapers per day. This completes the ongoing renewal project under the name Rollenwechsel.ch, as Ringier Print announced according to NLZ-Online. The new plant costs CHF 65 million.

This week, Microsoft presented its Bing search engine. After the initial tests, Microsoft is now hot on Google's heels. Google has now responded with its own Bing: The Squared search engine.
The new search engine works like Google, except that in the new program the hits are displayed in tabular form, in a square, so to speak. Hence the name Squared. The table contains images and short descriptions of the results for the search term. The mouse-over function leads to a link to the source, which then provides the complete description. However, the search is restricted to categories or genres.

The Friday edition of the Anzeiger Luzern is increasing its circulation by 20,000 copies and expanding its distribution area. Since Friday, in addition to Lucerne and Littau/Reussbühl, the municipalities of Emmen/Emmenbrücke, Kriens/Obernau, Horw and Ebikon have also been served by the Friday edition. The free newspaper has thus increased its circulation by over 30 percent to 67,000 copies.

English music producer Phil Spector, who has been convicted of murder, is eagerly tweeting from his prison cell. At least that's what over 1000 Twitter users thought, as Pressetext reported on Thursday. After Spector was given the maximum sentence of 19 years in prison by a judge in Los Angeles for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, the 69-year-old is now said to have complained about his treatment behind bars via Twitter. According to media reports, the eccentric ex-producer - known for the so-called Wall of Sound of his music and collaborations with music greats such as the Beatles - is particularly angry about the fact that his hair wig was confiscated in prison.
However, as the latest messages on his Twitter page and individual reports now make clear, it is not the real Phil Spector, but a previously unknown user who has apparently been having a lot of fun. One of the latest messages from the alleged ex-producer states that the account was only created as a joke. "I am not Phil Spector. I copied a lot of his quotes and half of them I made up. I also fooled a lot of the media," writes the "fake" Spector. It was fun, but now he feels the whole thing has gotten out of hand.
It is now commonplace for celebrities to use the microblogging service for their own purposes. However, the fact that convicted murderers are speaking out from their cells and, as in the Spector case, complaining about the lack of special treatment seems rather unusual. According to the Twitter messages, the former music producer was allowed to keep both his personal laptop and iPod when he was imprisoned in April. However, this fact alone sounds rather unlikely.
Nevertheless, numerous media outlets fell for the fake Spector and reported on his crazy tweets. For example, the convict announced on May 30 that he would write a letter of complaint to the governor to get his confiscated wig back. In addition, the fake Spector sent messages about his medication and wrote that "depression is a wasted emotion". The previously unknown Twitter user also discussed Spector's potential mental illness, posting: "Basically, I'd say I'm probably relatively crazy, to an extent." Spector's profile currently has over a thousand followers.