Life in the summer slump
Column: No one has ever spotted the Loch Ness Monster, and no one talks about «sour cucumbers» anymore: Jürg Altwegg’s thoughts after the summer break.
Column No one has ever seen the Loch Ness monster, and no one talks about "pickles" anymore: thoughts after the big vacation For many years, my newsagent moaned when I went on vacation. Not because of the slump in sales. But because she was ordered to keep Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine and a few magazines. Back then, it was unthinkable to subscribe to foreign newspapers - they didn't arrive until the next day at the earliest. The local gazettes piled up in the post, and collecting and reading them was by no means just a professional reflex. It was a bit about not missing anything and not leaving any gaps in the dossiers. It was clearly an addictive behavior. That's why I was so fond of the late newspaper La Suisse. It appeared every day of the year, on December 25 as well as on Easter Monday. I didn't read it every day by any means, but always when everyone else left me in the lurch and alone. What's more, you could get the paper as soon as it left the printers and read tomorrow's newspaper, so to speak.
I despised those French newspapers that didn't include magazines for two months in the summer. Or the weeklies that sometimes skipped an issue. They didn't know what they were doing to their readers.
This dependency now has a new fetish. The Internet is everywhere, and everything is on the Internet. It manages journalists' dossiers and has turned the claim to completeness into an illusion. And it has also devalued the individual titles. Hardly anyone cares anymore if a newspaper is sold out at the newsstand. You get everything anyway - somehow. The rest is chance.
Media consumption in summer is characterized by this freedom and alienation. The media's carelessness encourages the absent-mindedness of our contemporaries. They snub their most loyal users. Television stops broadcasting because everyone is outdoors anyway. But that's not true. The commuter newspapers don't appear at all - and what if someone drives to work anyway? This year, even the respected Tages-Anzeiger magazine has canceled an issue on the grounds of "heat vacations". Did anyone notice or even get outraged?
Newspapers will be even slimmer in the summer than they already were during the crisis. Series have been pre-programmed. Topicality is cooked on the back burner. Backgrounds fall victim to the heat. But no one is talking about "summer slump" and "pickles" anymore. Nobody has spotted the Loch Ness monster. Summer consumption is no longer an issue. There is certainly no media criticism of it: "Persönlich" is not "im Netz", Werbewoche is not in the mailbox. Is it pure shame? Are they harbingers of the future - because the autumn of the media is looming in the summer?
In this drought, you suddenly discover completely new pleasures. On the plane on the way home, I spent two hours reading a three-day-old NZZ and was amazed at how much there is in a newspaper. Impressive! The weather forecast from the day before yesterday. Not the latest sports results. News from Switzerland. Iso Camartin's reflections on July 14 and August 1. Stock market prices without any binding force. Martin Meyer's comments on Schiller's concept of freedom. After the World Cup, the first games of the Swiss championship heralded a new beginning after the lockdown.
And in my old habit, I leafed through the magazines at home, which had been published after all. I read the monthly interview with Good News boss André Béchir. He had become wise and really likeable. He had brought Pink Floyd to Wetzikon in 1971. Yes, and I was there. I wrote "Good News - Bad News" in the Zürichsee-Zeitung. It was before I was expelled from the cantonal school in Wetzikon (because of other articles). My very first anger as a very young writer. I was impressed and reassured by Béchir's conciliatory tone in the magazine: he had forgotten. And his wise formulations made me realize that the change in media behavior in the summer is perhaps just a symptom of old age.
Jürg Altwegg is the cultural correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Geneva and an author.
I despised those French newspapers that didn't include magazines for two months in the summer. Or the weeklies that sometimes skipped an issue. They didn't know what they were doing to their readers.
This dependency now has a new fetish. The Internet is everywhere, and everything is on the Internet. It manages journalists' dossiers and has turned the claim to completeness into an illusion. And it has also devalued the individual titles. Hardly anyone cares anymore if a newspaper is sold out at the newsstand. You get everything anyway - somehow. The rest is chance.
Media consumption in summer is characterized by this freedom and alienation. The media's carelessness encourages the absent-mindedness of our contemporaries. They snub their most loyal users. Television stops broadcasting because everyone is outdoors anyway. But that's not true. The commuter newspapers don't appear at all - and what if someone drives to work anyway? This year, even the respected Tages-Anzeiger magazine has canceled an issue on the grounds of "heat vacations". Did anyone notice or even get outraged?
Newspapers will be even slimmer in the summer than they already were during the crisis. Series have been pre-programmed. Topicality is cooked on the back burner. Backgrounds fall victim to the heat. But no one is talking about "summer slump" and "pickles" anymore. Nobody has spotted the Loch Ness monster. Summer consumption is no longer an issue. There is certainly no media criticism of it: "Persönlich" is not "im Netz", Werbewoche is not in the mailbox. Is it pure shame? Are they harbingers of the future - because the autumn of the media is looming in the summer?
In this drought, you suddenly discover completely new pleasures. On the plane on the way home, I spent two hours reading a three-day-old NZZ and was amazed at how much there is in a newspaper. Impressive! The weather forecast from the day before yesterday. Not the latest sports results. News from Switzerland. Iso Camartin's reflections on July 14 and August 1. Stock market prices without any binding force. Martin Meyer's comments on Schiller's concept of freedom. After the World Cup, the first games of the Swiss championship heralded a new beginning after the lockdown.
And in my old habit, I leafed through the magazines at home, which had been published after all. I read the monthly interview with Good News boss André Béchir. He had become wise and really likeable. He had brought Pink Floyd to Wetzikon in 1971. Yes, and I was there. I wrote "Good News - Bad News" in the Zürichsee-Zeitung. It was before I was expelled from the cantonal school in Wetzikon (because of other articles). My very first anger as a very young writer. I was impressed and reassured by Béchir's conciliatory tone in the magazine: he had forgotten. And his wise formulations made me realize that the change in media behavior in the summer is perhaps just a symptom of old age.
Jürg Altwegg is the cultural correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Geneva and an author.
