Peter Jost steps down as editor-in-chief of BZ Berner Zeitung - Simon Bärtschi takes over
Simon Bärtschi will become the new editor-in-chief of the BZ Berner Zeitung at the beginning of next year. He succeeds Peter Jost, who is taking on a new professional challenge.
Change of chair in the editorial department of the BZ Berner Zeitung: The previous Editor-in-Chief Peter Jost is leaving Tamedia at the end of December 2018 and will now be responsible for the City of Thun's City Marketing and Communications department. He will be succeeded by Simon Bärtschi, who is currently Head of Editorial Services at Tamedia.
In recent years, Peter Jost has played a key role in shaping and developing the leading subscription daily newspaper in the canton of Bern. He has sharpened the regional profile of the BZ Berner Zeitung and cultivated a reader-oriented, accessible style. Together with his editorial team, he succeeded in surprising readers with new formats, especially in the digital realm. In recent years, BZ Berner Zeitung has repeatedly won prestigious awards for infographics and multimedia storytelling formats, such as the Grimme Online Award, the Infographics Award of the German Press Agency and the Swiss Press Award. Peter Jost developed the concept of the summer campaign BZ treasure hunt, which has moved more than 130,000 participants throughout the canton of Bern over the past five years. Most recently, he established a specialist career for journalists as head of the "Expert Circle" project.
Peter Jost has been with BZ Berner Zeitung since 2001, first as sports editor and later in the business department. In 2009, he became a member of the editorial board of BZ Berner Zeitung, which he took over at the beginning of 2014.
Simon Bärtschi, an established expert in the industry, is filling the position of Editor-in-Chief. The 49-year-old from Berne has worked for Tamedia since 2003 and is currently Head of Tamedia Editorial Services, responsible for the production departments of the newspapers in German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland. Until 2017, he was a member of the editorial boards of Tages-Anzeiger and SonntagsZeitung, and before that he was Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Head of News at SonntagsZeitung for several years. Before joining Tamedia, he worked for the Aargauer Zeitung in Baden, among others.
Simon Bärtschi studied geography and media science at the University of Bern. Most recently, he completed the Punch Sulzberger Program, an executive leadership program at Columbia University in New York.
