I love you to bits
Column The bride is hectically adorning herself and losing weight, only to be handed over to the groom in her most beautiful dress. We are talking about the creeping sell-off at Ringier.
Column The bride is hectically adorning herself and losing weight, only to be handed over to the groom in her most beautiful dress. After the discontinuation of the business newspaper Cash and the sale of Tele, the rumor mill in the media scene is buzzing. The company itself is saying that Ringier is now going multimedia. The company now wants to concentrate on the Cash daily platform with its digital media. According to the Group, the free newspaper has 26,000 registered Livepaper users and offers WebTV as well as video and audio podcasts. The Cash Group also includes Cash.ch - according to Ringier, the largest financial platform in Switzerland independent of the banks with 220000 users per month, as well as Cash mobile and the television programs "Cash TV" and "Cash Talk" on SF 2.Is the decision to close the company just a first step in preparation for another deal with the German publisher Springer? Another indication: key positions have been vacant for months. We are thinking of the editor-in-chief of Blick or the head of Schweizer Illustrierte. These are all indications that a takeover is at least being discussed. Experience shows that a slow death is always much more agonizing than a short, clear cut. Instead of getting a deal like this over the line as quickly as possible, we wait instead for ... yes - what actually? What happens instead is exactly what always happens: Good journalists leave the sinking ship. A second guard keeps the titles alive. I don't want to diminish the achievements of those who persevere. However, these people usually pursue their own goals.
The sell-off of Ringier began years ago. The Group had failed to train young journalists in its strong Boulvard division and develop them into potential managers. Instead, the company increasingly relied on the "Säuhäfeli-Säudeckeli" principle when it came to recruiting managers. For decades, this company earned its money with tabloid journalism. Instead of reacting to this with pride, the role of CEO was taken by someone who would have preferred to run a chic art and culture publishing house. There would have been nothing wrong with that - if only he had given in to his passion! But he lacked the courage. A love-hate relationship developed between the former cash cow Blick and this sensitive man of the arts.
Every employee at Ringier began to feel this discrepancy somehow. In the 1980s, Blick employees still enjoyed going to work. The reporters from the regional offices went in and out of the homes of potential readers. It was a kind of "Blick bi de Lüüt". Then part of the Group's management decided to turn Blick into a quasi-smart tabloid and thus gave the starting signal for the newspaper's demise. The result: many good journalists no longer had any prospects. They migrated to neighboring sectors such as advertising and PR and began their campaign against former employer media houses as management consultants. But they remained journalists at heart. This was recently demonstrated by the passionate questions posed by the former editor-in-chief of Cash, Markus Gisler, in the SonntagsZeitung: Why is the monthly magazine Cicero allowed to get by without readers and produce losses, but Cash is not? Why not close Cash daily, which is already well over four million francs in the red, is three times behind budget and is not popular with advertisers? Why were the addresses of Cash subscribers sold to the competition? Why was a German publishing director with no knowledge of the local industry allowed to market the product half-heartedly? Why is Switzerland's largest publishing house giving up its only Swiss-German product, with which it was able to fulfill the desired intellectual standard to some extent? We'll know more by the end of the year!
Karin Müller is a communications consultant in Zurich.
The sell-off of Ringier began years ago. The Group had failed to train young journalists in its strong Boulvard division and develop them into potential managers. Instead, the company increasingly relied on the "Säuhäfeli-Säudeckeli" principle when it came to recruiting managers. For decades, this company earned its money with tabloid journalism. Instead of reacting to this with pride, the role of CEO was taken by someone who would have preferred to run a chic art and culture publishing house. There would have been nothing wrong with that - if only he had given in to his passion! But he lacked the courage. A love-hate relationship developed between the former cash cow Blick and this sensitive man of the arts.
Every employee at Ringier began to feel this discrepancy somehow. In the 1980s, Blick employees still enjoyed going to work. The reporters from the regional offices went in and out of the homes of potential readers. It was a kind of "Blick bi de Lüüt". Then part of the Group's management decided to turn Blick into a quasi-smart tabloid and thus gave the starting signal for the newspaper's demise. The result: many good journalists no longer had any prospects. They migrated to neighboring sectors such as advertising and PR and began their campaign against former employer media houses as management consultants. But they remained journalists at heart. This was recently demonstrated by the passionate questions posed by the former editor-in-chief of Cash, Markus Gisler, in the SonntagsZeitung: Why is the monthly magazine Cicero allowed to get by without readers and produce losses, but Cash is not? Why not close Cash daily, which is already well over four million francs in the red, is three times behind budget and is not popular with advertisers? Why were the addresses of Cash subscribers sold to the competition? Why was a German publishing director with no knowledge of the local industry allowed to market the product half-heartedly? Why is Switzerland's largest publishing house giving up its only Swiss-German product, with which it was able to fulfill the desired intellectual standard to some extent? We'll know more by the end of the year!
Karin Müller is a communications consultant in Zurich.
