SRF: New organization in the newsroom in place

In June 2021, SRF provided information about the project, which is now to be implemented in coordination with the editors-in-chief and the specifications of the "SRF 2024" transformation project as of the end of March 2022. In the process, the Video and News Digital editorial teams broke new ground in terms of employee participation.

New key journalistic roles

According to SRF, the reorganization will eliminate certain functions in the newsroom and strengthen others, such as the topic planners. They now have a key journalistic role in that they plan and implement background content holistically for digital and broadcast.

Pasquale Ferrara and Daniel Foppa, among others, will take on the role of Domestic Theme Planning. They are supported in turn by Annik Ott, Fabian Bucher and Biljana Gogic. Regional planning is the responsibility of Anna Gossenreiter and Katharina Schorer, among others. Former U.S. correspondent Thomas von Grünigen, Pascal Kraus and Wasiliki Goutziomitros are among those responsible for foreign reporting. And Matthias Pfander and Andreas Lüscher are responsible for business reporting. There are no changes at the Federal Parliament editorial office in Bern, headed by Urs Leuthard.

In the daily news department, the so-called "CvDs" - chief of staff - and the producers of the programs, the "SRF News" app and the social media channels are strengthened. Together with the editors, they are responsible for the journalistic stories during the day.

The responsible CvDs are divided among five people with digital and broadcast backgrounds, who take turns in this important role: Sabina Hübner, Beat Giger, Michael Perricone, Stefan Reinhart and Benedikt Widmer.

One broadcast coordinator instead of three broadcast managers

Other functions, such as specialist editors and program managers, will be eliminated. This should further simplify processes and free up more resources for content production. For example, instead of the current three program directors of "Schweiz aktuell," "Tagesschau" and "10 vor 10," there will be a new function of broadcast coordinator, which will be taken over by one person. In the future, the current "Tagesschau" head Regula Messerli will be responsible for the profile and direction of the various TV news formats "Schweiz aktuell," "Tagesschau" and "10 vor 10.

In the course of this restructuring, specialist editorial managers Baisl Honegger and Roman Mezzasalma, as well as "Schweiz aktuell" editorial manager Silvia Zwygart, have decided to take up new careers outside of SRF (Werbewoche.ch reported).

INTERVIEW

"Less coordination required, simpler processes, more responsibility on the front lines."

Ursula Gabathuler, Head of News Digital, and Tristan Brenn, Editor-in-Chief CR Video, explain the reorganization in SRF's newsroom in an interview.

How can we summarize the core of the reorganization in a nutshell?

Tristan Brenn: We want to simplify the structures in the newsroom. Less coordination effort, simpler processes, more responsibility at the front. To achieve this, we have streamlined the work structures at management and coordination level. That's exactly what the employees wanted. And we are now trying to implement it.

Ursula Gabathuler: In this way, we are also implementing an important guideline of SRF 2024, namely the development toward flatter hierarchies within our company. Furthermore, the structure is also intended to bring about a cultural change towards self-organization.

Self-organization in the newsroom? How does it work?

Gabathuler: We deliberately work with a flexible role model and not with fixed positions. Employees take on a defined role with the corresponding competencies. They should be able to take on more responsibility because they are best able to assess the respective challenges. In other words, where the problems arise, the people concerned should develop the solution themselves.

So there are no more bosses, or in other words, everyone is their own boss?

Brenn: Leadership is still needed. But in the new newsroom, this leadership work is no longer performed by "the position of the boss" - instead, it is distributed among various roles working in the newsroom system. This is not a criticism of the previous leaders, quite the opposite. They have all done a great job. And their work doesn't disappear into thin air either. But we are organizing it differently.

With the reorganization, certain functions will be eliminated. Will this also mean job cuts?

Brenn: As already communicated, my CR Video department will have to cut another five full-time positions by the end of 2022 - based on 200 full-time positions. Our newsroom project will also have to make a contribution to this savings order.

Digital and broadcast should be planned holistically. Shouldn't that have been a matter of course long ago?

Gabathuler: Of course, digital and broadcast are already working closely together. One example is our "Fakecheck" format, which we publish both on the app, on social channels and in the "10 vor 10" show. We want to do this even more consistently in the future. And that means planning our content for the digital channels and for TV reporting at the same time right from the start.

The changes are drastic. How do you manage this cultural change?

Brenn: We are fully aware that this cannot be done at the push of a button. And it can't be prescribed either. Ideally, a new "we" feeling will emerge on its own, through joint work, through the success that the same content has in both a "10 to 10" and an Instagram piece. In this respect, we are already enormously advanced compared to two or three years ago.

Gabathuler: In the future, the new newsroom should be "home" and enable identification via content, independent of organizational structures and editorial boundaries. That is our goal. Now we are setting out together.