René Worni on a difficult liaison When Vorarlberg publisher Eugen A. Russ talks about newspapers, his eyes light up. For him, there is no other medium that contains information in such a concentrated form and whose content could not be more different. From this point of view, newspapers are an image of the world compressed into a few pages, where you can get a global overview faster than anywhere else. Other media can only dream of such simplicity. In the spirit of Russ's bon mot, around 162 German publishers now want to raise awareness of the medium that is regularly declared dead ("Newspapers - those who read, understand") and polish up the dusty image of newspapers. "Newspapers are the number one journalistic medium," says Helmut Heinen, for example, the German counterpart to local publisher president Lebrument and publisher of the Kölnische and Bonner Rundschau. The publishers are advertising with 40 ad motifs in their own newspapers and with radio and TV commercials. Newspapers should (once again) be seen as the medium that enables people to be active members of a democratic society. Apart from the retro groove ("Hey, we've still got printer's ink on our hands!"), such image cultivation would also suit the newspaper makers in the small media country of Switzerland.
But electronic development is merciless. Following the launch of the Cash daily platform, one of Ringier's main focuses will be Blick online. At Tages-Anzeiger, blogs have recently even made their way into the paper, and its neighbors to the north have just launched an Internet offensive on sueddeutsche.de. It remains to be seen to what extent the linking models of print and online will have a binding effect on readership and thus stabilize circulation. The British Sun is even trying a Myspace-style community (with a strong surplus of naked girls.) In this sense, the (unfortunately) departing watch bloggers from 20 Minuten give hope with their assessment after 22 months of the commuter blog: "Thanks to our quality control, 20 Minuten was able to increase its readership by 70 percent from 78,000 to 13,39,000." That's very promising.
René Worni,
Editor
