A satirical column by Mario Güdel in the advice magazine Beobachter has caused outrage in Valais. Under the title "Time to break a taboo", the author called for Ticino, the "sunniest region in Switzerland" with a "siesta mentality", and the "structurally weak" and "subsidized" Valais to be "dumped" as unprofitable regions in view of the current difficult economic times. Since then, the Beobachter has been bombarded with emails of complaint, according to an article in the free newspaper 20 Minuten. Without further ado, a Facebook group called "Mario Güdel läbt gferli und versteits nid" (see picture) was founded, which now has over 1,500 members. Even the editor-in-chief of the Walliser Bote got involved and described the Beobachter columnist as a "smart aleck with diarrhea" - a "hopeless case. Because stupidity cannot be cured."
Güdel himself has made himself scarce after an apology e-mail, which was perceived as a standard reply by the angry Valaisans. As 20 Minuten knows, he does not reply to emails or phone calls. Andres Büchi, editor-in-chief of the Beobachter, takes action: Among other things, he writes a public apology to the people of Valais. For him, the matter is now closed, he tells 20 Minuten. And everything seems to be slowly taking a turn for the better. Because the Walliser Bote publishes Büchi's apology. Admittedly not without also publishing Güdel's column and pointing out that nothing had been owed to Mr. Güdel with the commentary. But still.

New supplement for the free newspaper Baslerstab: from Thursday, the newspaper will regularly include Kinowoche. The pocket-sized supplement provides a complete program overview and brief descriptions of the latest cinema events in Basel. In addition, there are various prizes to be won in each issue through SMS participation - for example shopping vouchers or cinema tickets.
Cinema Week, which has an initial print run of 10,000 copies, is available from Thursday lunchtime at the Baslerstab distribution boxes in the city center and at around 120 culture boxes in the surrounding area. In addition, the program overview will also be placed in all cinemas and distributed by colporteurs on the launch day. At the same time, the cinema week will be advertised with spots on Radio Basel 1 and Radio Basilisk, as the Basler Zeitung Medien wrote in a press release on Thursday. The new product is aimed primarily at a young, outgoing audience.

Kloten-based Airplus International, a subsidiary of Lufthansa Airplus Servicekarten in Germany, has commissioned the Zurich-based communications agency Primus Communications with the PR mandate for Switzerland. The Primus Communications team is working closely with the Swiss office and the press office at Airplus headquarters, according to a statement from the agency. The aim is to achieve an effective presence in the Swiss media. The aim is to further increase awareness of Airplus among companies and business travelers as well as within the travel industry. The focus will be on both product and company-specific topics.

Hans-Kaspar Schwarzenbach, Director of Davos Klosters Tourism, has launched a tourist Alpine television program. As the Aargauer Zeitung reported on Thursday, the magazine will be produced on a weekly basis. The latest program is available from Thursday on Davosklosters.tv available. The reports are also broadcast every half hour on the Davos Klosters Tourismus information channel on the region's local cable network. The twelve-minute magazine includes a news block, a core topic, a preview of weekend events and a weather report.
The TV destination magazine is only running in test mode. The official launch will take place on February 12. According to AZ, improvements still need to be made before then. The budget amounts to around CHF 500,000. According to Switzerland Tourism, this is the first project of its kind in Switzerland.

As already announced, 43-year-old Werner De Schepper is taking over the position of Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Aargauer Zeitung. In this function, the former editor-in-chief of Blick will act as editor-in-chief of the Aargau-Bund and the regional sections. He will take up his post on February 15, as AZ Medien announced on Thursday following the official election by the Board of Directors. He replaces Balz Bruder, who is leaving the Aargauer Zeitung in mid-February.
Werner de Schepper has been working as a coach for the regional sections of the Aargauer Zeitung since September 1, 2008 and is in charge of the project to relaunch the regional editions. The graduate theologian lives in Olten. He also retains his position as a lecturer at the University of Neuchâtel.
On February 1, 33-year-old Christian Dorer will start work as the new editor-in-chief of AZ and the Mittelland Zeitung association. The other deputy editor-in-chief and editor of the MZ section, 34-year-old Philipp Mäder, will take over on March 1.

Simultaneous advertising presence on TV and the Internet increases efficiency: the purchase intention for a product increases by more than 50 percent when the two media are used in combination. This is the result of a study recently conducted on behalf of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Thinkbox.
According to the study, advertising shown on television very often leads to a search for information and a purchase on the internet. In addition, TV advertising significantly increases the click rate of online advertising, which in turn triggers internet searches for the product and a purchase on the internet. Online advertising thus serves as a direct order and purchase channel without media discontinuity. Conversely, online advertising can also bring previous TV advertising to mind.
The Goldbach Media Group, which recently joined the board of IAB Europe, sees the study as confirmation of this: The marketing of electronic media under one umbrella of expertise sustainably increases efficiency. The results of the studies confirm that Goldbach Media's multimedia offering brings synergies for customers and that the efficiency of the advertising franc can be significantly increased, Martin Radelfinger, IAB Europe Board Member and member of the Goldbach Media Executive Board, is quoted in the press release.

The Young Socialists (Juso) Switzerland have been forced to remove the modified film poster of "Black Hawk Down" from their website for their petition against the deployment of the Swiss army in Somalia. According to an article in the free newspaper 20 Minuten, the Swiss distribution company Ascot Elite had threatened to take legal action against the US war film because the Juso had allegedly abused copyright. Apparently, one of the actors was recognizable despite the editing of the poster.

The online travel portal Ebookers.ch is launching the French-language "Blog de Voyage" for French-speaking Switzerland just over a year after its German-language travel blog. Under blog.ebookers.ch/fr a team of bloggers led by Stephanie Booth provides daily travel information. According to a statement from Ebookers.ch, the site offers professionally researched reports, columns and tips on all aspects of travel. Readers are involved and can leave comments. The blog is edited by the online publisher Blogwerk in Zurich.

On February 19, the Swiss Music Awards will be presented for the second time. For the first time, the event will also be shown on television. Jubaira Bachmann will lead the show, which will be broadcast on Pro Sieben Switzerland on February 20 and in a repeat on February 22. On Viva Switzerland, the show can be seen on February 21.
The award ceremony will take place at Zurich's Kaufleuten and will be hosted by Melanie Winiger and Marco Fritsche. The music award honors national and international artists in ten categories, including for the first time the Best Live Act International category. The nominations have been known since Wednesday and are available on Swissmusicawards.ch listed.

China has censored Barack Obama's inauguration speech on television and the internet. As soon as the translator of the new US president's speech uttered the word "communism", the sound cut out on Chinese state television. The speech then faded out completely and a presenter asked an expert about the upcoming challenges facing the American economy.
In his speech, Obama explained that previous generations of Americans had overcome "communism and fascism not only with missiles and tanks, but also with stable alliances and firm convictions". The word "communism" was missing in the translations of the speech on the major Chinese internet portals Sina and Sohu on Wednesday. A second paragraph of the speech, in which Obama addressed states that silenced their critics, was missing entirely.
The government in Beijing has massively expanded censorship on the internet in recent weeks and closed more than 200 websites. The official reason given for this is "vulgar content". The censorship is linked to several politically significant dates, such as the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The Bern-based agency Neue LGK is represented three times in the advertising yearbook: With a TV commercial for Swiss Post, it even secured the industry victory in the "Transport and Logistics" category for the second time in a row. The winning commercial "We" shows how much Swiss Post employees have their work in their blood.
In addition, two further LGK projects were included in the current yearbook: the films for Schweizer Zucker and the cross-media campaign with Trainer Max for health insurer KPT.

Trade unionists protest against austerity measures and redundancies. Intellectuals and politicians are calling for the Confederation to be preserved. Why isn't anyone protesting against the cold snap and calling for spring in January?
What is going on in the media in these times of crisis is to a large extent staging with a heightened loss of reality. Those responsible at publishing houses have no choice but to act, and quickly. Newspapers, for example, move much more money per employee than industrial companies, for example. That means increased risk. Now the whole event is taking place in an industry that has to generate its income from two partially opposing markets. The reader market is sluggish (or to put it more politely: stable), but saturated. The advertising market, on the other hand, is early cyclical, i.e. it anticipates the economic situation and the expectations of entrepreneurs in all sectors, which is reflected not only in the job advertisements. Marketing (and therefore advertising expenditure) is one of the expense categories that can be influenced most quickly. And since the majority of managers do not do what is necessary and important when saving money, but rather what will have the quickest effect, communication and advertising budgets are cut early or even as a precaution during a crisis. This mechanism means that advertising, and therefore the media industry, is hit early in every crisis.
At the Epiphany Conference, the range of possible courses of action could be clearly measured by comparing the appearances of NZZ Chairman of the Board of Directors Conrad Meyer and Tamedia CEO Martin Kall, for example. Kall revealed the details of the synergy projects between Bern and Zurich with an openness that surprised me. It was said that many of his own employees had learned more from this presentation, which was peppered with informative consultant charts, than they had previously been told in-house. (I was no longer surprised that the charts were no longer available on the website). Kall demonstrated on a 1:1 scale the business style that enables not only survival but also market leadership, even in difficult times: Everything is questioned, everything is re-examined from the outside, and everything is implemented at a rapid pace. This is "ruthless", one hears grumbling from within Tamedia. That is correct. Consideration for ingrained habits and expensive traditions is no longer affordable in these times. The man does what he is paid to do, and he explains his actions publicly without beating about the bush. Chapeau!
Conrad Meyer's presentation, which once again began with the 18th century messenger on horseback, left me with only one figure: a target value of 31 percent, the proportion of the NZZ's total costs that should be covered by editorial costs. Elsewhere, this figure is 22 to 25 percent. Anyone who can set such targets is suffering at a high level.
But whether it is 31 or 21 percent, there is no getting around the fact that editorial costs are largely personnel costs, meaning that savings are not possible without reducing this cost block. The associated risk is obvious, and the trade union and intellectual critics are right. Journalism and the downstream subjects of form production are intellectual services and as such can only be rationalized to a very limited extent (like architecture or pastoral care). Staff cuts quickly (but not inevitably) have repercussions on editorial quality. The fewer qualified people in the editorial team, the less work on the dossiers, the less in-depth coverage (which would actually be the survival strategy of paid newspapers!), the greater the influence of the interest-driven communications industry, whose growth is already enormous, crisis or no crisis.
If anything, the Basler Zeitung's approach, as far as we know, is preferable: a major cut, withdrawal from an entire segment that no longer works (weekend supplement), concentration on its own strengths. Protests would be of little help, they would be protests against the laws of reality. What would be the alternative?
David Montgomery, the aggressive newspaper investor, has just sold his German holdings and exited the business - presumably at a high loss. Fast money apparently no longer finds the media sector as "sexy" as it used to be. And who got involved? Neven du Mont, another one of the old publishing families who stick to their business in the face of adversity because they have no other.