Mirroring ensures quality
Noteworthy: Regular editorial scrutiny of one’s own field is a reliable—and, what’s more, cost-effective—way for media outlets of all kinds to boost their credibility and appeal.
Column Regular editorial observation of one's own profession: for media of all kinds, this is a safe and cost-effective means of increasing their credibility and attractiveness. The media themselves have long encouraged the public to believe that professionally researched and prepared information is available free of charge; that citizens are virtually entitled to be informed comprehensively and free of charge. Anyone who wanted to know how journalism works and how editorial content is created learned just as little about it in their newspaper as they did on television. Many publishers, directors and editors-in-chief have long repressed the fact that their work is just as interesting and relevant as politics or business when it comes to reporting.
After a brief heyday, media journalism has recently been drastically decimated again - at least in Switzerland and Germany. Due to the crisis, the departments set up for this purpose have been closed down one after the other. Whether it's Weltwoche, Tages-Anzeiger, Facts or the Bund, they all seem to be able to do without their own media pages again.
I consider this to be a major miscalculation. Editors-in-chief and publishing house managers are sawing away at the branch on which they themselves are all sitting. They are depriving themselves of the only platform through which they can communicate credibly with a wider public about their own profession. As Zurich journalism professor Ulrich Saxer warned years ago, the public has little chance of developing its own quality criteria if such information is not provided. Perhaps the reason why so many young people read 20 Minuten instead of Tagi or NZZ is because no one has taught them what the added value of the latter might be and why it might be worth buying a newspaper rather than a can of Coke.
Even customer-oriented large companies, ministries and non-profit organizations do not rely solely on advertising and direct contact, but also engage in active public relations work. Media releases from Novartis, BMW and Swisscom require editorial "disguise" or embedding in order to reach their target audience effectively and credibly.
Media companies also have to walk this rocky road. However, the media are increasingly depriving themselves of precisely this opportunity to report regularly and competently on their own profession and its concerns on special pages.
Of course, this purpose cannot be achieved with a department that allows itself to be instrumentalized by the internal PR department. Professional media journalism is characterized by the fact that it resists self-congratulation and cross-promotion as well as all temptations to pour scorn on the competition or keep it quiet.
On the contrary: for credible, fair and balanced media journalism, occasional self-criticism is virtually constitutive. Major American daily newspapers have been showing us for years how this can be institutionalized.
Anyone who believes that media journalism is dispensable is contributing to the fact that journalism as a whole could become superfluous: If publishing houses invest in their PR departments, but on the other hand think they can rationalize away journalists who report on their own subject with impunity, this is definitely the wrong signal.
Especially in a society in which traditional journalism is increasingly being displaced by innovative PR anyway.
Stephan Russ-Mohl calls for more and bolder media journalism.
After a brief heyday, media journalism has recently been drastically decimated again - at least in Switzerland and Germany. Due to the crisis, the departments set up for this purpose have been closed down one after the other. Whether it's Weltwoche, Tages-Anzeiger, Facts or the Bund, they all seem to be able to do without their own media pages again.
I consider this to be a major miscalculation. Editors-in-chief and publishing house managers are sawing away at the branch on which they themselves are all sitting. They are depriving themselves of the only platform through which they can communicate credibly with a wider public about their own profession. As Zurich journalism professor Ulrich Saxer warned years ago, the public has little chance of developing its own quality criteria if such information is not provided. Perhaps the reason why so many young people read 20 Minuten instead of Tagi or NZZ is because no one has taught them what the added value of the latter might be and why it might be worth buying a newspaper rather than a can of Coke.
Even customer-oriented large companies, ministries and non-profit organizations do not rely solely on advertising and direct contact, but also engage in active public relations work. Media releases from Novartis, BMW and Swisscom require editorial "disguise" or embedding in order to reach their target audience effectively and credibly.
Media companies also have to walk this rocky road. However, the media are increasingly depriving themselves of precisely this opportunity to report regularly and competently on their own profession and its concerns on special pages.
Of course, this purpose cannot be achieved with a department that allows itself to be instrumentalized by the internal PR department. Professional media journalism is characterized by the fact that it resists self-congratulation and cross-promotion as well as all temptations to pour scorn on the competition or keep it quiet.
On the contrary: for credible, fair and balanced media journalism, occasional self-criticism is virtually constitutive. Major American daily newspapers have been showing us for years how this can be institutionalized.
Anyone who believes that media journalism is dispensable is contributing to the fact that journalism as a whole could become superfluous: If publishing houses invest in their PR departments, but on the other hand think they can rationalize away journalists who report on their own subject with impunity, this is definitely the wrong signal.
Especially in a society in which traditional journalism is increasingly being displaced by innovative PR anyway.
Stephan Russ-Mohl calls for more and bolder media journalism.
> Stephan Russ-Mohl is a professor of journalism at the University of Lugano.
