Sack or donkey?

Guest commentary Is the new space concept destroying small children? On the contrary, says René Grossenbacher. Two newspapers in French-speaking Switzerland (Nouvelliste, Liberté) are up in arms against Wemf's new room concept. If it were up to them, the 40-year-old shared flats should remain, even though they have long since ceased to have anything to do with reality. Liberté editor-in-chief de Diesbach is also waging his battle via Werbewoche (19/04) with a less than squeamish vocabulary ("hirnrissig", "hirnverbrannt", "Hundstage-Projekt" etc.). The highlights of the campaign for the time being include initiatives by the Fribourg government and French-speaking members of parliament as well as the demand for the nationalization (!) of Wemf. The journalists' association Impressum also got involved and issued a communiqué raising the spectre of impending job losses in small and medium-sized newspapers. One rubs one's eyes in amazement: What is actually going on here? The new space concept is the result of a Publicom study jointly financed by Bakom and Wemf. This was carried out for the first time ten years ago and has now been updated on the basis of newly available data. The spatial concept has therefore been in existence since 1994 and has been used in media policy and practice ever since. So far without any protest. Now the critics are claiming that the zones of influence of their papers are being "seriously" reduced. This already points to a major misunderstanding: the project is not about the demarcation of publishing territories, but about the definition of communication areas and economic areas. The two-tier concept is fundamentally new for the Wemf. The previous WGs were too coarse for some planning purposes and reflected the distribution areas of small and medium-sized newspapers in particular far too poorly. This deficiency is being remedied by the creation of communication spaces. The claim that smaller and medium-sized newspapers would be disadvantaged by the new concept is therefore simply wrong.
De Diesbach speaks of a "drastically" shrinking advertising market due to the new shared flats. The opposite could just as easily be claimed. The only consequence that is certain to occur concerns the reported reach in the defined areas: if a shared flat becomes smaller, the reach of the regional newspaper increases. If it becomes larger, it decreases. Why a Liberté should have better chances in the national advertising market in a large area with a low reach than in a smaller area with a large reach is therefore, with the best will in the world, incomprehensible.
It is not Wemf that defines the newspapers' market areas, but the newspapers themselves do this by optimally developing their coverage area. If this is successful, readership will increase and advertisers will follow. They will hardly be stupid enough to ignore a strong newspaper. So why the outrage and the instrumentalization of politics? Are they perhaps beating the sack and referring to the donkey?
> René Grossenbacher heads the media research company Publicom and is the architect of the Wemf space concept.