Igor Sedykh, journalist
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Igor Sedykh, Geneva-based Russian journalist who in 2009 was awarded the Swiss-Russian Cooperation award for journalism at the World Association of Russian Press congress held in Lucerne, died Friday 12 March in Geneva, his widow, Barbara Sedykh, announced.
Sedykh began his career with the monthly Sa Rubeschom, worked in Geneva as a correspondent for the Russian news agency Ria Novosti, and most recently he was known for his reporting for Kommersant from Geneva on Russian affairs, war and arms-related topics. His articles were often picked up elsewhere in other languages.
Sedykh was a longtime member of the Swiss Foreign Press Association.
Links to other sites: Cooperation Council Switzerland-Russia, Kommersant, Medecins sans frontieres
Pierre Veya, Le Temps, new managing editor
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Le Temps, the main serious newspaper in French-speaking Switzerland, has named one of its own, Pierre Veya, editor-in-chief, after a three-month industry-wide search. Veya replaces Jean-Jacque Roth, who has held the post since 2002. Roth in February became head of a joint television-radio news team at Radio Television Suisse Romande (RTSR), created in January by the merger of public television and radio in the region.
Veya, age 49,will take up the new position 1 May 2010.
Veya received a graduate degree in business in Delémont, Switzerland, after which he worked at L’Impartial, covering the Jura and cantonal news. In 1989 he joined Swiss news magazine L’Hebdo, where he was responsible for the economy section.
Click on image to view larger (© Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.)
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss media companies’ revenues from advertising nosedived by 20.4 percent in 2009, falling to CHF1,585.7 million. Worst hit was the financial and economic press, down 30.1 percent and Sunday newspapers, with a 29.4 percent fall in ad sales. Dailies were close behind, with revenue down 21.6 percent. In December 2009 alone the daily papers saw their advertising income fall by 4.4 percent.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The cost of subscribing to a Swiss daily newspaper will rise in 2010, between 1 and 11 percent, to keep in step with increased costs and lower advertising revenues. The rise is even greater in reality in some cases such as the NZZ, when a mid-2009 increase is taken into account, notes ats/TSR. The newspaper’s editor, Markus Spillmann, has written to subscribers saying that “High quality information is an expensive product.”
The traditional income balance has been one-third subscriptions and two-thirds advertising, but with the latter falling dramatically for several months, readers are now being asked to foot a larger share of the bill. Newstand prices are also set to rise.
The rising cost of Swiss papers, according to ats/TSR, includes:
- Le Matin and 24 Heures, CHF379 to CHF389
- Le Temps, 11 percent, from current price of CHF432 for 13 months
- NZZ, from CHF488 to CHF512.
Background, GenevaLunch
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - RSR radio and TSR television will be reborn as RTS, Radio Télévision Suisse in January, when the regional media will merge. The two are part of the SSR group, Switzerland’s public media company. The merger was announced Wednesday 25 November to staff at the two stations in Lausanne and Geneva.
A savings of CHF6 million for a total budget of CHF392m is expected, with the money to be put into programming. The merger will also result in 30 jobs lost out of 1,600 (fulltime equivalent: 2,000 actual jobs), but over a period of five years.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - 20 Minutes, recently merged with Matin Bleu, will concentrate its distribution channels on cities and the Lake Geneva region belt as part of cost-cutting measures. The free newspaper will stop using boxes in outlying areas and reduce the number of them in smaller villages in the region in order to place more of the papers in urban centre, particularly Geneva.
Links to other sites: TSR, 20 Minutes (Fre)
More Swiss media cuts on the way
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Edipresse, the largest media company in French-speaking Switzerland, announced Friday 9 October that it will cut nearly 10 percent of its workforce: 100 jobs, with half in its print units, some 30 journalists’ positions and the rest in production. The company has 1,124 full-time equivalent positions in Switzerland. Half of its approximately 3,000 employees work outside the country. Details about which jobs are affected will follow later. The group will begin consultations next week with staff representatives: Edipresse Romande (French-speaking area) has collective agreements with staff, although it has not had such agreements in German-speaking areas in the country.
The latest round of job cuts is due largely to a 25 percent drop in advertising since 2008, with “no improvement in sight”, the company says.
Update 14:00 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevLunch) – Geneva’s public prosecutor, Daniel Zapelli, has now prepared his case against the key people responsible for the collapse of Geneva’s cantonal bank (BCGE), reported the Tribune de Genève 1 October. The article gives a detailed account of the bank’s scandal 10 years ago, based on Zapelli’s 600-page indictment, which the Tribune obtained. Lawyers and government officials have expressed anger in the wake of the article, that a newspaper should have obtained a copy of the indictment before the parties concerned, reports 20 Minutes.
The debacle cost the canton CHF2 billion, and a foundation had to be created to pay off its debts. Hearings in the case began in 2000 and ended only in 2008: they resulted in 3,700 pages of recorded hearings, 40 binders for general information and 1,500 binders of documents related to the hearings, according to an article Le Temps wrote in 2007 about the lengthy judicial process for the case.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Le Temps, the main serious newspaper in French-speaking Switzerland, is making several changes to cope with a sharp drop in advertising revenue, cutting 7.5 percent of its editorial staff (10 jobs). It says the subscription price will be raised for 2010. The newspaper says that the advertising revenue decline, which has hit the entire industry, is the worst in 60 years and requires dramatic action. GenevaLunch spoke with another newspaper editor from the region Monday, who said more cuts can be expected at other newspapers in the region in the next two months. Le Temps notes that it was able to keep the job cuts at this level because of offers by several staff to reduce the number of hours they work.
Le Temps editor Jean Jacques Roth explains in a lengthy editorial that subscriptions and newsstand sales rarely cover more than one-third of a newspaper’s revenues but in the past few years costs have risen due to competition from free newspapers’, readers’ rising expectations for coverage, development of web sites, and in the case of Le Temps, good growth in readership.
Heidi grows up: Swiss Farm Calendar wins top industry award for glamour
Heidi's friends, all grown up, too - Swiss Farm Calendar, boys
Hirgiswil, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The popular annual Swiss Farm Calendar, which sells out by Christmas, has just taken the top 2009 award in the glamour field given by the industry’s Calendar Marketing Association. The photographer was Claude Stahel and the calendar is published by Magic Fox Media, a corporate and calendar publishing company based in Hirgiswil.
Click on images to view larger
To view the rest of 2009: Swiss Farm Calendar images, girls, boys
Title: Fantoche: Animation film festival
Location: Baden
Link out: Click here
Description: This is the only festival devoted exclusively to the full array of animation techniques, content and media.
Start Date: 08 Sep 2009
End Date: 13 Sep 2009
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss Federal Council (cabinet) has told Parliament it does not want the country’s political parties to advertise on television or radio in the run-up to elections, nor does it want to see it pursue legislation to enable this. The decision comes as a result of debate since 2005 over a move to better balance political advertising by giving the parties equal broadcast time.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Four police officers in Geneva are detailed to the CFF rail service and the Tribune de Geneve, in a feature article, accompanies them on their daily round to better understand how they work with cantonal and city police as well as the CFF rail security guards. By the end of 2010 Switzerland will have 20 more police officers covering railway stations and the rail system, in ensure adequate security. There have been a number of incidents in rail stations in recent months.
Crowd at the Malley sports centre in Lausanne waits for the Dalai Lama to begin Wednesday conference
Dalai Lama, listening to Tibetan music group in Lausanne
Update 14:20 Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Sellout crowds of 12,000 for two days of conferences offered by the Dalai Lama, in Lausanne and briefly in Geneva 5-6 August, heard the Tibetan spiritual leader talk about “Understanding our minds and the causes of happiness” but he reserved for the media, whom he met with at length, his appeals to have more light shed on the violence in Tibet in March 2008.
image: WhmSoft
Legendary US broadcaster Walter Cronkite has died, age 92, at his home in Connecticut. Cronkite represented, for many Americans, an era of reassuring television news that has been replaced by multiple news sources and multimedia. Cronkite’s son Chip announced that his father had died of complications of dementia.
The International Herald Tribune/NY Times summarizes the role he played: “From 1962 to 1981, Mr. Cronkite was a nightly presence in American homes and always a reassuring one, guiding viewers through national triumphs and tragedies alike, from moonwalks to war, in an era when network news was central to many people’s lives.”
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Mouammar Qadaffi, Libya’s leader, is out to “take apart” Switzerland, Swiss public radio and television are reporting today. The result will be to make it far more difficult for a meeting between the leaders of the two countries to take place. Two Swiss men have been detained by Libya for a year, following an incident where Qadaffi’s son Hannibal was arrested in Geneva, 15 July 2008.
Washington, DC (GenevaLunch) - The US Justice Department has e-mailed major US media to deny a story that appeared 23 June in the New York Times, calling the report that the government plans to drop a lawsuit again Swiss bank UBS “simply untrue.”
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – SSR, Swiss public broadcasting company, will lose its director general, Armin Walpen, and its deputy director general, Daniel Eckmann, at the start of 2011. Walpen has confirmed that he will retire 31 December 2010 and Eckmann earlier announced that he will leave at the end of January 2011, a month later. SSR will begin the search for its new senior management team at the end of August 2009.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – SSR, the Swiss Broadcasting Company, is freezing salaries effective the end of 2009, as well as new hires, part of a series of measures to economize in the face of a growing deficit. The company announced Tuesday 23 June that the state-supported system will see its deficit grow from CHF200-790 million by 2014 without larger subsidies or revenues.
The salary freeze will allow the company to save CHF30 million a year, but it still needs to find another CHF40m a year to remain financially healthy.
Update 22:55 The protests by thousands in Iran over disputed election results continued during the weekend despite a call Friday by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, to end them. The Iranian government said Sunday that 10 more people had died, bringing the death toll to 19, and dozens more were injured, but journalists, including foreign media, are “are subject to Iranian restrictions on their ability to report, film or take pictures in Tehran” reports Reuters. Amnesty International says that numbers are “perilously hard” to verify.
Iran has complained of Western interference in its internal affairs.
The BBC’s resident correspondent has been asked to leave, a Dubai TV station office remains closed and 23 local journalists and bloggers have reportedly been detained. The streets of Teheran were reportedly quiet Sunday, but there were reports of gunfire in northern suburbs, home to many followers of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi, who has called for more protests. Al Jazeera, BBC, The Globe & Mail, NPR, Xinhua
Zurich, Switzerland (romandie/ATS, Fre) – NZZ, German-speaking Switzerland’s main serious newspaper, said Wednesay 17 June that it will cut 20-25 jobs among its IT staff as part of plans to merge some of its operations. The cost-cutting measure will not touch the editorial staff. NZZ laid off 24 employees (20 fulltime posts) in late 2008. The newspaper also said it is studying sharp increases in subscription rates and the possibility of charging for some of its online content, notably financial reporting and commentary by its best-known journalists.
NZZ posted a loss for the first quarter of 2009, with advertising down by 30 percent from January to the end of March. Its Internet operations are operating at a loss that is currently CHF3 million, reports ATS. (2007-2008 figures). The Zurich newspaper is the latest media group in Switzerland to announce job cuts, in a string of actions to try to turn around the hard-hit newspaper, magazine and online news business.
Morges, Vaud, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Eight cartoonists from Lebanon are guests of honour at the Morges Festival sous rire, an annual humour fest in Vaud. Le Temps online carries a sample of their views of their country.
Swiss news weekly L’Hebdo magazine’s 2 June edition features on its cover the murder trial of Cécile Brossard, accused of killing her lover, wealthy French banker Edouard Stern, in 2007. GenevaLunch, a partner of l’Hebdo, brings you the English version in two parts, with an introduction by GL editor Ellen Wallace.
French version © 2009 l’Hebdo
English version © 2009 GenevaLunch (may not be reproduced in part or whole without written permission). Translation: Sean Ecker
Background: The trial of Cécile Brossard for murdering Edouard Stern opens in Geneva 10 June, and is expected to run to 19 June. With 30 journalists accredited, it will likely remain in the headlines for the length of the trial. She has admitted to murdering her lover, divorced banker Edouard Stern, one of France’s wealthiest men, who was 50 at the time of his death in February 2005. The killing – four gunshots at his luxurious apartment in central Geneva – sparked enormous media interest at the time. The story was a hot mix: money, world travel, an on-again off-again affair he had with a woman 16 years his junior who came from a middle-class small-town French background while he came from generations of banking wealth, and then there was the death scene, with the victim found dressed in a head to toe latex suit that was part of their sadomasochistic sexual games. And then tales of his manipulative behaviour began to eke out, while other observers questioned his killer’s words.
The trial adds to this two well-known lawyers and public curiosity about the woman who committed the crime. Swiss media have already warmed up for the trial: the Tribune de Genève writes of obscure plots, disinformation being spread and swissinfo (in French) relates a tale of passion, power and sex. Suisse Illustré asks, diabolical Mata Hari or fragile woman? TSR, which is putting three journalists on the story, has a video blog to follow the trial.
The story according to L’Hebdo:
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss federal Competition Commission has decided to look more closely at the situation that will be created by a morning newspaper distribution agreement that could leave almost no competition in German-speaking Switzerland and parts of French-speaking Switzerland. The commission concluded after a preliminary review that further study is needed. Tamedia, NZZ and La Poste are seeking to cut costs by joining forces to distribute papers.
In another development linked to the increasingly difficult situation of Swiss media, several hundred journalists took to the streets in Zurich and Bern Tuesday 26 May over editorial staff job cuts announced by Tamedia.
Yellow-bellied singing toads, Pays de Gex, France
Pays de Gex, France (GenevaLunch) - Prince Charming lives in a pond in the Pays de Gex, where he leads the good life of a French frog (aka toad) who won’t be invited to the kitchen anytime soon. Read all about him and other creatures who live in Shirley Curran’s pond, in Gardener in the sky, a GenevaLunch blog which is starting up again now that the winter is over. Shirley, who provides the Jura part of the GL ski reports in winter, and who writes about books and crosswords on the Book my place blog, is the guest blogger this week on the garden blog.
You can now subscribe by rss feed to any of the blogs, including the new food and restaurant one by Jonell Galloway, The rambling epicure, and New to Geneva, by events editor, GL reporter and all-around curious person Laila Rodriguez. The subscription box is top right on the page, by the search box. You can either get the feeds by e-mail or through a separate reader.
