Media Brands, the Audience, and a "Hate Slam"

How can media brands be managed? An international and interdisciplinary group of researchers at the University of Zurich recently discussed the topic of media branding. Media economist Gabriele Siegert had invited people to the conference to explore the question of what influence brand management has on journalistic quality - and vice versa. One of the most exciting aspects was the role the audience plays in branding.

At the same time, the regional newspaper in Bayreuth, the Nordbayerische Kurier, organized a bold and exciting experiment that attracted a lot of attention among experts in the German-speaking world: The paper organized a "hate slam" and publicly communicated the insults, attacks and vulgarities from the mostly anonymous "underground" that editors have to deal with on a daily basis in the online comment columns.

To this end, the editorial team collected reader feedback over the course of a year and presented "the worst of" it - in a public event that filled a hall with over 400 people. This offensive finally made transparent to a wider audience what costs editorial teams elsewhere a lot of time, causes headaches and is certainly also demotivating: that there is a small but often vociferous minority that simply rants wildly online, cultivates faecal language and no longer knows any rules for interpersonal interaction - forcing editorial teams to put a lot of effort into moderating their online comment columns.

Of course, the kind of transparency created by the Nordbayerische Kurier and the desired sense of community between the editorial team and the vast majority of readers cannot be achieved without risks and side effects. It seems that the readers who were publicly "paraded" and pilloried in Bayreuth have not yet canceled their subscriptions. One of them, who recognized his own reader comment during the hate slam, even reacted humorously, reports editor-in-chief Joachim Braun. The campaign "generated a lot of sympathy, even among people who are not (or no longer) newspaper-savvy. The predominant tenor: "It's nice that journalists don't take themselves so seriously."

The reactions at the international conference in Zurich were also rather benevolent. Three samples: Kati Förster and Klaus Schönbach (both University of Vienna) said that the initiative could strengthen reader loyalty ("community building") and regain credibility ("it does wonders for credibility"). Schönbach also expects a "vaccination effect" - potential criticism from outside is already anticipated by the newspaper itself and may therefore come to nothing. And Lisa-Charlotte Wolter (Hamburg Media School) added: "The very fact that we are talking about it here is an indication of success."

Nevertheless, the audience, the readers themselves, are of course part of media branding. Helmut Scherer (University of Music, Drama and Media, Hanover) reminded us that clever marketing strategists at media companies have been trying for decades to use their readers in their image and advertising campaigns. The multiple award-winning slogan of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung "Behind it there's always a clever mind" is probably the best-known example of this in the German-speaking world.

This slogan would no longer work after a hate slam like the one performed by the Nordbayerische Kurier. Even if the regional paper cannot be compared with the F.A.Z.: Presumably, even in Bayreuth, not every newspaper reader wants to be part of a community in which individuals simply let their hair down and disregard all rules of decency.

In conclusion, it is not easy to call on editorial offices to follow suit. The journalism observer in me is happy about the increase in transparency, while from a marketing and brand management perspective, there is a high risk that too much openness could have a negative impact on the media brand.

Stephan Russ-Mohl directs the European Journalism Observatory at the University of Lugano.