The total editor-in-chief
Column: The «big shots» of yesteryear, before whom advertising managers used to bow and scrape, would be a publishing risk in an age when information merely adorns the back pages of advertisements, according to Oliver Fahrni.
Column In times when information only adorns the back of advertisements, the "character bark" of yesteryear, before which advertising managers stooped, would be a publishing risk. Or do you know the editor-in-chief of the Blick, the Basler Zeitung, the SonntagsZeitung? conquer India or would you prefer Russia? asked a little Corsican in Egypt. Own Gretchen or the world formula? pondered Faust. Atomic bomb or hands off it? weighed Einstein. A ray of sunshine or the great Alexander's favor? thought Diogenes. Those were still dilemmas. Today we have Shakira's panties. "Where, with the almighty Murdoch?" asks the modern editor-in-chief, furrowing his receding brow decoratively: "Where, in which of my papers do I place the red-hot story about the latest amours of the beautiful Trällerin? In the Globalwoche? In the Lookout? Or in the Sunday facts?"
Cultural pessimism! cries the person described (every era has the killer arguments it deserves). For the time being, this is only about identifying a trend - the trend towards a total editor-in-chief.
Like any self-respecting trend, this one is also made up of tendencies: the tendency towards total press concentration. The tendency to place various newspapers under the same editor-in-chief or (Ringier variant) an "Editorial Director Newspapers". The tendency to subordinate editorial offices to the publishing house management, or (increase) to entrust one and the same person with editing and advertising sales, or (climax) to give ownership of the newspaper directly to the editor-in-chief (Springer variant).
Until now, we have only known this kind of thing from Baron Childerich von Bartenbruch, i.e. from literature. In "The Merovingians or the Total Family" by Heimito von Doderer, the aforementioned Bartenbruch succeeds in becoming his own father, grandfather, son-in-law and father-in-law through a clever marriage and adoption policy. If the author of the fable were alive today, Bartenbruch would be called Frank Toppler and would not be a baron, but an editor-in-chief.
Actually logical, one would like to say to those who nostalgize for better times, when editors-in-chief were "barkers of character", bear-bitten cheroot smokers or elegant world travelers, thinking heads in any case, who accomplished a great deal through their own writing and before whom the advertising managers stooped slightly. But where information no longer has any value other than simply adorning the back of advertisements, where journalists have degenerated into content managers, where the profession no longer has any concept of a qualified public, society and democracy, it is hard to see why content and commerce should be separated - such figures would be a miscast, a publishing risk, a corporate governance accident. Or do you know the editor-in-chief of the Blick, the Basler Zeitung, the SonntagsZeitung? - Exactly.
This is how the total editor-in-chief grows up. Profile: young, politically right-wing, worshipping the dead religion of the free market, versatile, good manager. Frank Toppler in a nutshell. At some point we will get to the point where Frank Toppler not only has to solve the dilemma of Shakira's panties, but also gives his head of culture Frank Toppler the task of asking society reporter Sandra Meier (one of Frank Toppler's pseudonyms) to copypaste 213 characters about Shakira into the paper from the global text pool of all freelance text producers. It may be that Meier, alias Toppler, then suspects for the duration of a blink that Shakira is also just a pseudonym of Fra...
Oh yes, one more thing. In 1949, Marshall McLuhan noted on the publication of George Orwell's "1984": "The misleading effect of books like 1984 is to project into the future a state of affairs that already exists. This draws attention away from the present facts."
P.S. A little coup de gueule between friends, which of course has absolutely nothing to do with the matter at hand: Enough! Enough of the racist bleating of the followers of that other little man who hands out business cards saying he is Minister of Justice (the total super editor-in-chief?). Enough of the media rewarding this sleazy revanchism with coverage, according to the old tabloid motto: scandal over nude photos - here are the pictures. I finally fall completely silent before the caricature that the SP comes up with...
Oliver Fahrni is a freelance journalist and media ecologist
Cultural pessimism! cries the person described (every era has the killer arguments it deserves). For the time being, this is only about identifying a trend - the trend towards a total editor-in-chief.
Like any self-respecting trend, this one is also made up of tendencies: the tendency towards total press concentration. The tendency to place various newspapers under the same editor-in-chief or (Ringier variant) an "Editorial Director Newspapers". The tendency to subordinate editorial offices to the publishing house management, or (increase) to entrust one and the same person with editing and advertising sales, or (climax) to give ownership of the newspaper directly to the editor-in-chief (Springer variant).
Until now, we have only known this kind of thing from Baron Childerich von Bartenbruch, i.e. from literature. In "The Merovingians or the Total Family" by Heimito von Doderer, the aforementioned Bartenbruch succeeds in becoming his own father, grandfather, son-in-law and father-in-law through a clever marriage and adoption policy. If the author of the fable were alive today, Bartenbruch would be called Frank Toppler and would not be a baron, but an editor-in-chief.
Actually logical, one would like to say to those who nostalgize for better times, when editors-in-chief were "barkers of character", bear-bitten cheroot smokers or elegant world travelers, thinking heads in any case, who accomplished a great deal through their own writing and before whom the advertising managers stooped slightly. But where information no longer has any value other than simply adorning the back of advertisements, where journalists have degenerated into content managers, where the profession no longer has any concept of a qualified public, society and democracy, it is hard to see why content and commerce should be separated - such figures would be a miscast, a publishing risk, a corporate governance accident. Or do you know the editor-in-chief of the Blick, the Basler Zeitung, the SonntagsZeitung? - Exactly.
This is how the total editor-in-chief grows up. Profile: young, politically right-wing, worshipping the dead religion of the free market, versatile, good manager. Frank Toppler in a nutshell. At some point we will get to the point where Frank Toppler not only has to solve the dilemma of Shakira's panties, but also gives his head of culture Frank Toppler the task of asking society reporter Sandra Meier (one of Frank Toppler's pseudonyms) to copypaste 213 characters about Shakira into the paper from the global text pool of all freelance text producers. It may be that Meier, alias Toppler, then suspects for the duration of a blink that Shakira is also just a pseudonym of Fra...
Oh yes, one more thing. In 1949, Marshall McLuhan noted on the publication of George Orwell's "1984": "The misleading effect of books like 1984 is to project into the future a state of affairs that already exists. This draws attention away from the present facts."
P.S. A little coup de gueule between friends, which of course has absolutely nothing to do with the matter at hand: Enough! Enough of the racist bleating of the followers of that other little man who hands out business cards saying he is Minister of Justice (the total super editor-in-chief?). Enough of the media rewarding this sleazy revanchism with coverage, according to the old tabloid motto: scandal over nude photos - here are the pictures. I finally fall completely silent before the caricature that the SP comes up with...
Oliver Fahrni is a freelance journalist and media ecologist
