Swiss Review 3/2018

12 Swiss Review / May 2018 / No.3 Politics support from federal government in future. In parallel with the crisis at SDA, the upheaval in the traditional media industry is continuing. It sufferedma- jor setbacks in 2017 with advertising, the most important source of income for publishers, increasingly moving away from journalismand shifting to- wards the internet giants. The diver- sity of the press is dwindling and con- centration continues to increase. Editorial staff are being merged and are producing various newspaper ti- tles centrally. Tamedia, the media group with the greatest reach in Switzerland, is driving this trend. In 2017, it an- nounced plans for the most radical form of internal press concentration. The 14 Tamedia newspaper titles would all be retained but, from the start of this year, Swiss politics, for- eign affairs, business, culture, society, background, science and sport would each be merged into a single central editorial department. Pietro Supino, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Tamedia and a publisher, is aware that the merger of editorial teams is a “contentious issue” because it affects the “identity of indi- vidual titles”. In the anniversary sup- plement “125 years of Tamedia”, pub- lished at the beginning of March 2018, he remarked: “This is why it is vital that we enable better journalism in the new structure – by bundling re- sources – and thus create a new iden- tity.” If this fails, people will “rightly say that we have destroyed valuable assets. However, if we succeed, and the initial indications bode well, then we will have laid a solid foundation for the future of journalism in Switzer- land.” “Operational viability under threat” Editorial staff representatives take a much more critical view of this step. They believe it is resulting in ridicu- lous situations. Some of these central units are overstaffed because journal- ists fromthe various newspapers have beenmerged into them. Contrastingly, local departments, which continue to exist on some titles, tend to be under- staffed because people leaving are not being replaced. An insider has re- vealed that the operational viability of the editorial staff is under threat. The group is focusing on natural attrition. However, unless enough people de- part voluntarily, there are fears of a wave of redundancies in the near fu- ture. The Tamedia group has now also started the takeover of themediamar- keting companyGoldbach. The goal is to create amarketing company that is amongst thosewith the greatest reach in Switzerland. Goldbach organises most of the advertising shown onGer- man private TV stations operating in Switzerland. The Somedia publishing company in the canton of Grisons has been pursuing a similar approach to Tame- dia since April 2018. The previously independent daily newspapers “Sü- dostschweiz” and “Bündner Tagblatt” will also be produced by a merged central editorial department. The reasons are the same – to create syn- ergies and cut costs. This means job losses are likely.