Swiss church newspaper becomes multimedia dialog platform
The Swiss Church Newspaper (SKZ) has been revamped for the future. It is now in color, has a new online presence, and is led by three women. The bishops of the dioceses of Basel, St. Gallen, and Chur presented the new concept on Tuesday in Zurich.
As a multimedia dialog platform, the church newspaper will in future reflect the broad spectrum of opinions in the Catholic Church, as Markus Thürig, Vicar General of the Diocese of Basel and President of the Editorial Commission, told the media. The SKZ should be "broadly based, practical and, above all, economically viable".
This was also one of the main aims of the relaunch: "To keep the SKZ going in a difficult economic environment", as Thürig explained. Those responsible hope that the revised website will appeal to new reader groups and increase the current certified circulation of 1,760.
Three women at the top
"We want to increasingly bring different positions into conversation with each other and thus also recruit new readers," said St. Gallen Bishop Markus Büchel. Specifically, he is thinking of religious educators or catechists, for example. "It was very important to us to create this forum for the Catholic Church."
Maria Hässig, Rosmarie Schärer and Brigitte Burri, two theological editors and a media journalist, were entrusted with the task. "You may be surprised that there are three women sitting next to us bishops," said Felix Gmür, Bishop of Basel. They were simply the best in the selection process.
However, the new start is also associated with additional costs. Until just over a year ago, Urban Fink-Wagner had been responsible for the SKZ as sole editor for twelve years. However, the renewal of the journalistic concept now showed that the editorial capacities had to be expanded.
Absorbing additional costs through additional subscriptions
"The German-speaking dioceses of Switzerland will incur additional costs," said Vitus Huonder, Bishop of Chur. "We hope that we can absorb the additional costs through additional subscriptions and that the newspaper can be run profitably."
Another change is that the magazine will only be published every two weeks instead of weekly from 2018. The articles will focus more on pastoral practice and will therefore be shorter. Instead, they will be published in greater depth on the website. The newspaper will now be published by Brunner Medien in Kriens LU and no longer by NZZ Fachverlag.
The SKZ has been publishing specialist articles on theology and pastoral care since 1832. It is the official journal of the dioceses of Chur, St. Gallen, Basel, Lausanne-Geneva-Fribourg and Sion. The French-language edition "Evangile et Mission" was discontinued in 2012. (SDA)
