The Los Angeles Times is laying off up to 300 more employees. The fourth-largest newspaper in the USA will lose 70 journalists, explained editor-in-chief Russ Stanton on the Internet, according to SDA. This corresponds to eleven percent of the editorial staff.
The elimination of 70 editorial positions had already been announced in October. In July, 250 people were made redundant, including 150 journalists.
It was not initially known how many employees the newspaper still has. Like many other American newspapers, the Times, which belongs to the Tribune Co., is suffering from an advertising slump. Many of the ads are now placed on the Internet.

Mathias Küng, long-time head of the domestic department at the Aargauer Zeitung, will become the new head of politics in Aargau at the beginning of March 2009. The 50-year-old will take over from Balz Bruder, who is leaving the Aargauer Zeitung. The succession plan for Matthias Küng in the domestic editorial department has been initiated, according to a statement from AZ Medien. Küng reports to Werner De Schepper, Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Editor-in-Chief Aargau/Regions.
Urs Moser, currently editor-in-chief of the Solothurner Tagblatt, will become deputy editor for Aargau/Regions and, as a political reporter, will primarily write for the Aargau-Bund section of the Sonntag newspaper. Before the 45-year-old joined the Solothurner Tagblatt in April 2006, he reported from the Federal Parliament for Blick from 2000 and was editor and Federal Parliament correspondent for Sonntagsblick from 1996 to 1998. From 1988 to 1995, he was editor and head of the local editorial team at the Solothurner Zeitung. Moser will take up his new position on June 1, 2009 at the latest.
As already announced, there will be a change in the editorial team on February 1, 2009: Christian Dorer will become Editor-in-Chief of the Aargauer Zeitung/Mittellandzeitung. Philipp Mäder and Werner De Schepper have been appointed deputy editors-in-chief. Mäder will be the editor of the main section, De Schepper the editor for Aargau/Regions.

Urs Moser.

Jörg Schnyder, Jürg Weber and Hans-Peter Klauser have been appointed as new members of the NZZ Group Management Board. They will take up their positions on March 1, 2009, as the Zurich-based media company announced on Friday evening.
Jörg Schnyder, previously CFO of LZ Medien Holding, will become CFO of the NZZ Group. Jürg Weber, Managing Director of Neue Luzerner Zeitung AG, will be responsible for the media in Central Switzerland and Hans-Peter Klauser, General Manager of Tagblatt Medien, for the media in Eastern Switzerland. With Weber and Klauser, the regional media companies combined in FPH Freie Presse Holding will be directly represented on the NZZ Group's management board, according to the statement.
Beat Lauber, until now Managing Director of FPH, has decided to change his career direction and leave the NZZ Group. Until his departure at the end of January 2010 at the latest, he will take over projects of the NZZ Group as part of the realignment and support their implementation.
It has been known for some time that the new management team also includes NZZ Editor-in-Chief Markus Spillmann as Head of Journalism NZZ and Daniel Hofer. Hofer is Head of Publishing Activities Zurich with organizational integration of Zürich Landmedien. The Chairman of the Board of Directors of LZ Medien Holding, Hans Kaufmann, will step down at the end of his statutory term of office at the Annual General Meeting in May 2009. The current Delegate of the Board of Directors of LZ Medien Holding, Erwin Bachmann, will be proposed to the shareholders as his successor.

Bernard Cathomas, the director of Rhaeto-Romanic radio and television, who is leaving in the spring, is proposing the creation of a four-language national television channel for culture. This was reported by the NZZ am Sonntag. The "Helvetic Arte" is intended to further exploit the existing cultural programming offered by the SRG chains and make it accessible to a wider audience. The idea, which is to be discussed at a conference in Bern on February 13, is highly controversial at a time when the public is fiercely opposed to a fee increase and the SRG is complaining about pressure to cut costs. Cathomas is obviously aware of the unfortunate timing for the launch of a new project, according to the Sunday publication. The invitation to the conference emphasizes that the broadcasts produced by the various SRG chains can be reused cost-effectively by means of subtitling or dubbing. Distribution could be realized with a separate television channel for culture and Rhaeto-Romanic programmes.
SRG spokesperson Daniel Steiner was tight-lipped and defensive about the idea in an interview with the NZZ am Sonntag. The fact is that there is no SRG cultural channel project and no corresponding plans in terms of time and finances. Director General Armin Walpen will present his personal opinion and the SRG's position on a "Helvetic Arte" at the conference in February.

The Golbach Media Group, which is active in advertising marketing, acquires 50 percent of the Swiss company Gartenhof Medien GmbH, the operator of Wilmaa Internet TV, a free, browser-based Swiss Internet television channel. Gartenhof Medien GmbH is a subsidiary of Soutionpark. Goldbach has been the exclusive marketer of Wilmaa.com since the end of 2008. By acquiring a stake in Internet TV, Goldbach Media intends to further strengthen its technological expertise in the rapidly growing interactive and mobile marketing sector, according to a press release issued on Friday.

Manuel Gutierrez will become Managing Director at Fujitsu Siemens Computer Switzerland on February 1, replacing Marco Hungerbühler. Hungerbühler took over the management temporarily after Roger Semprini was appointed Vice-President for the Eastern Europe region on October 1, 2008. According to Netzwoche, Gutierrez reports to Wolfgang Horak, Regional Manager for South Eastern Europe.
Gutierrez will primarily be involved in shaping the restructuring process in Switzerland. From April, Fujitsu Siemens Computers will be managed as an independent unit of the Fujitsu Group. The focus will be on Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Business responsibilities will be shifted to the local regions to a greater extent than before.
Gutierrez is a qualified marketing and sales manager, holds an Executive MBA from the University of St. Gallen and has many years of experience in IT and telecommunications. He managed WT Management AG and was Country Manager Switzerland at Storage Tek AG and network specialist Avaya.

The press landscape in the capital was a topic of discussion in Bern's city council on Thursday. In an urgent interpellation, Luzius Theiler (GPB) demanded that the city council do something about the impending demise of the Bund. A monopoly newspaper in Bern would be a disaster, Theiler explained his motion. In his response, Mayor Alexander Tschäppät assured that the municipal council would do everything in its modest power to find a "viable solution".
According to the written response to the interpellation, state support for the press is not acceptable to the majority in Switzerland. For this reason, the municipal council also lacks the instruments to make a decisive contribution to maintaining media and opinion diversity. The city government can therefore only appeal to those responsible at Tamedia not to give up on the Confederation.
The municipal council considers contacting other publishing houses in German-speaking Switzerland, as suggested by Theiler, to be unhelpful. However, if the Bund and Berner Zeitung were to be merged, it has in mind a type of monitoring model similar to that which exists for the St. Galler-Tagblatt. There, a well-known, independent and professionally experienced person would monitor the performance of the monopoly newspaper on an ongoing basis and periodically recognize its achievements.
The city government is doing what it can, Tschäppät assured him. Tamedia CEO Martin Kall had credibly assured him that there was currently no decision in favor of one or other of the models under discussion and that all options were being examined.

The highest growth rates in internet usage are currently being recorded among 70- to 75-year-old users. According to the press release, this is the result of a recently published study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. While only 26 percent of this age group were online in 2005, this figure has now risen to 45 percent.
In contrast to the predominantly younger users, older people tend to use the internet less for socializing and entertainment purposes. Instead, the focus is on activities such as searching for specific information, e-mail traffic and shopping on online shopping portals. Search queries on specific health topics are particularly popular, as the study showed. Health queries drive the 73-plus generation to the web just as much as the 18 to 32 age group. By contrast, this topic area is much less in demand among teenagers. Overall, however, there is also a clear upward trend among older users when it comes to entertainment offers. For example, 13% of 64 to 72-year-olds stated that they occasionally download video material from the Internet. This represents an increase of eight percent on the comparable figure from 2005.

On Monday evening, it will once again be alea iacta est, and the gold and silver ADC cubes will be awarded for the best work in the Swiss advertising industry. To mark the occasion, Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett has launched a self-advertisement for Goldbach Media for its cross-media offerings, which will appear on the Internet and in the festive magazine Brisanz, published especially for the awards ceremony by ADC and the business magazine Bilanz. The highlight: the winners - and especially the losers - can be congratulated by top advertisers via an SMS service. The catch: as is usual in the industry, praise rarely comes without qualification.
" Click here for the ego boost

In collaboration with the University of Zurich, Coca-Cola and Mediacom, Adlink Media Switzerland has investigated the effectiveness of in-game advertising.
As part of the study, a scientific experiment was conducted in which over 100 people had to complete a race course. They were then asked to recall and evaluate the Coke Zero advertisement. The effectiveness of in-game advertising was confirmed, as detailed in a press release from Adlink. Around 50 percent had an unaided recollection of the advertising shown in the game. With support, 59 percent of participants even remembered the advertising. When asked how often they had noticed the advertising during the game, 55 percent answered that they had noticed the advertising very often.
According to the press release, concrete instructions for advertisers can also be derived from the study. For an established brand such as Coke Zero, for example, it was found that even a moderate frequency of ad impressions leads to an activation of brand recall. The increase decreases with a higher frequency. In addition, the closer the advertising was placed to the race track, the better both unaided and aided recall were.
However, caution is advised here. Werner Wirth, Professor of Empirical Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich, says: "Well-known brands can certainly lead to reactance more easily than unknown brands, especially if there is already a high level of advertising pressure, as is the case with Coca-Cola."

Zurich Zoo is planning a new elephant park. The elephants' new home will cover an area of more than 10,000 square meters. Zurich Zoo needs the support of donations for this project. Not all the money has been raised yet. Zurich Zoo has therefore commissioned the agency Advico Y&R to develop a fundraising campaign with posters, advertisements, radio spots and various other measures.
According to the agency's press release, the print subjects each feature an elephant pressed into the format of the medium with the message "More space for the biggest". In the radio commercials, children are heard telling well-known elephant jokes, such as asking how to get an elephant into a matchbox.
The campaign starts in February. Over the course of the year, various other measures will follow in which elephants will also be printed somewhere - for example on the paper carrier bags of Migros, which supports the zoo campaign as a sponsor.
> Radio spot 1
> Radio spot 2
> Radio spot 3
> Radio spot 4
Responsible at Zurich Zoo: Anna Baumann and Markus Rege (Head of Marketing and Education), Alexander Aeschbach (Graphics). Responsible at AYR: Markus Gut (CCO), Marietta Albinus (AD), Emi Lehmann (graphics), Andi Portmann (text), Ester Elices (strategy), Daniela Britt (consulting), Julier Vonier (photography and image editing).

The Zurich agency Lacher-Dumas has developed a campaign for Toshiba. It advertises a notebook in pink and black. The campaign for the Portégé A600 notebook aims to show that a notebook can also be stylish, according to a press release. The campaign includes advertisements, posters and online banners.
Responsible at Toshiba: Levent Kaygusuz (CEO), Marion Di Laurenzio (PM). Responsible at Lacher-Dumas Communications: Hans-Peter Lacher (CD), Simon Brun (AD), Tobias Koenen (consulting).