Legacy as a source of the new

 
Magazine L'Hebdo is throwing the traditional sections overboard: on April 30, the news magazine will launch with a new layout and new content. 
However, the only remaining news magazine in Switzerland after the death of Facts wants to remain true to the "Hebdo DNA", the "legacy" from the 1980s. L'Hebdo is a monument. Founded in 1981 by the current Ringier consultant and columnist Jacques Pilet, the first news magazine in French-speaking Switzerland sailed on the fresh winds of Western Switzerland's European euphoria. "Does your head good" was the cheeky advertising slogan at a time when newspapers were still well-behaved and politics were still institutional. L'Hebdo was critical, cosmopolitan, a believer in progress and the economy - and above all European. Editor-in-chief Alain Jeannet assures us that this will remain the case. But apart from that, it is a real relaunch that Jeannet and former Blick editor-in-chief Werner de Schepper, who has been sent to French-speaking Switzerland by Ringier as an external consultant, are currently preparing in the editorial office at the Pont Bessières in Lausanne.against the flood of information "People are overwhelmed by the flood of information and have too little time," analyzes Jeannet. This is the starting point for the editorial and graphic innovations in the magazine. L'Hebdo not only helps readers to get the essential information, but also to find their way through the flood of information, to position themselves and to make sense of world events. For this reason, the magazine is based on three completely new sections: "Actuels", "Mieux comprendre" and "Passions". These three sections combine the traditional sections. The latest news from Switzerland, the world, business and culture can be found in "Actuels", in-depth, didactically prepared background information as well as opinions, debates and polemics in "Mieux comprendre", and finally committed cultural criticism and passionate lifestyle in "Passions".
Alain Jeannet has high hopes for the "Affaires à suivre" section, inspired by the English weekly newspaper "The Week", in which the facts are accompanied by commentaries from other newspapers and a prospective analysis by the editorial team. The graphics are based on clear lines and an elegant appearance - two young typographers from Lausanne, Maxime Buechi and Ian Party, have designed a new typeface, "L'Hebdo", especially for this purpose. With so many new features, however, the magazine's "positive core values", the "Hebdo DNA", according to Alain Jeannet, should continue to be maintained. Werner de Schepper has also looked into this "legacy": "The aim is to go back to the sources, to the origins," he says.
Success factor "legacy "But what is this "Hebdo DNA"? To answer this question, we need to take a brief look back at the magazine's founding years. In 1981, publisher Ringier launched Die Woche and L'Hebdo at the same time. While Die Woche was discontinued after just one year, the magazine for French-speaking Switzerland was able to establish itself (see box). With varying success, but at least with the success that it is now the only remaining news magazine in Switzerland, after both Facts and Cash were discontinued last year. The relaxed competitive situation has certainly contributed to this: there is no Sunday press in French-speaking Switzerland as there is in German-speaking Switzerland. The only Sunday title, Le Matin Dimanche, is aimed at a broad audience. Edipresse positions it in such a way that it does not compete with L'Hebdo - after all, the two publishers are in the same boat with Le Temps.
However, the "legacy" has also contributed to its success. Werner de Scheppers defines it as follows: "L'Hebdo has a profile, opinions and a political identity; you read the magazine because you know where it stands." The magazine's tirades against the "arrogance of Zurich" with its "Unique Airport" are unforgettable, as is its commitment to the mouse-poor Parisian suburb of Bondy and the experiment in citizen journalism with the Bondy blog. Also unforgettable is the anti-Blocher editorial by former editor-in-chief Ariane Dayer, in which she compared the SVP to an epidemic and was sued by the SVP.
The magazine's anti-Blocher stance earned it a good scolding from Weltwoche last fall: L'Hebdo was virtually the only title in French-speaking Switzerland that had not yet understood the genius of Christoph Blocher and had not yet thrown its dogged, stubborn and outdated anti-Blocher stance overboard. The advice from his dear colleagues across the Saane for L'Hebdo: it is time to throw the "Pilet legacy" overboard. "I still haven't understood Blocher's genius," assures Alain Jeannet. The legacy will be retained: "Blocher is not good for the economy, Blocher is not good for Switzerland, Blocher is not good for the head."
Helen Brügger
Monument L'HebdoFounded in 1981, L'Hebdo was already able to
sell over 10,000 copies. By the mid-nineties, it was selling around 60,000 copies. This success was due to the first editor-in-chief, Jacques Pilet, who turned the magazine into a fighting paper for the French-speaking Swiss elite, the mouthpiece of an economic and cultural minority. He constantly sharpened his pen for French-speaking Switzerland, for Europe and, if necessary, against German-speaking Switzerland. On the other hand, L'Hebdo owed its initial success to the absence of competition: with few exceptions, the daily newspapers were still rooted in the cantonalism that L'Hebdo always mocked. Competition from the left, such as the weekly newspapers in German-speaking Switzerland, was non-existent. The tabloid sector was covered by Ringier's L'Illustré, without getting in the way of L'Hebdo.
experienced a turning point in the second half of the nineties. Le Temps was launched, the first national quality newspaper in French-speaking Switzerland and also practically the first newspaper to combine topicality with background. The news magazine struggled to cope with the new competition. It flirted with arbitrariness and commerce, and its circulation eroded year after year to below 44,000. It was not until 2007 that L'Hebdo was back in the black after several years of drought, with circulation rising to 48,450 copies and Editor-in-Chief Alain Jeannet claiming a "new credibility among opinion-makers and decision-makers". He describes environmental technologies and sustainable development as one of today's editorial priorities. (hb)