Juicy editorial bashing for Peter Rothenbühler

Le Matin editor-in-chief not very popularPeople king in new realm" was the headline in Facts this spring, after Peter Rothenbühler was appointed as the new editor-in-chief of the French-speaking Swiss daily newspaper Le Matin in December 2001. After only four months in office, however, the king is already being questioned by his editorial team. An internal vote of confidence revealed that 32 members of the editorial team voted against Peter Rothenbühler, 20 abstained and 39 employees voted in favor of their boss. Although, according to Theo Bouchat from Edipresse, the vote was an internal matter, the result of the vote was strangely passed on to SDA. Rothenbühler is the second editor-in-chief to be stabbed in the back by the editorial team of Le Matin. Daniel Pillard, now editor-in-chief of dimanche.ch, Ringier Romandie's Sunday newspaper, already had to resign just over a year ago - allegedly because he did not know how to lead the staff and because they resisted the tabloidization of Le Matin. This argument is also being used now. There is even talk of journalists who are not sufficiently trained for the tabloid style. "I hope we don't have to maintain a horde of semi-celebrities in the style of the Ringier papers," one editor told Facts at the time.
The fact that an editorial team can saw away at its boss's chair in this way suggests that the Edipresse management is not giving its editors-in-chief much cover. The vote of confidence after a hundred days in office was decided by Edipresse at a time when there were problems with the former editor-in-chief of the Tribune de Genève, Guy Mettan. The vote is purely consultative in nature (av).