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Theft or flattery

Flattery has its good side and bad, but sometimes when people copy you, it’s just simpler to throw away the original and stay focused on providing a good product and service. That’s the case with GenevaLunch, where changes in advertising formats and the addition of community service events ads this week have made me look again at some of the information we have posted about the site for months.

I’ve decided to throw away this phrase, which was on our advertising information page, not because it’s inaccurate but because two other groups who have begun publishing in the past six or so months have decided to use it, with very small changes:

GenevaLunch is the only English-language daily news source in the region that is entirely owned and produced by experienced,
professional journalists who are members of the English-speaking
community.

Since one of our primary goals is to inform, rather than confuse people, I think it is simpler to let GL visitors decide for themselves if this matters. In our 18 months, more than 200,000 pages have been viewed and we’ve had well over 100,000 visitors. We are the second source of information in English, after WRS, in the region, we believe.

Clearly theft

There is one point on which we remain firm, and that is the theft of material published here. Articles, photos, and any other information published by GenevaLunch remains our property and may be reproduced only with our written permission. Yes, we have had problems with people copying without asking and yes, we do chase them when we have time.

Where you find your Lake Geneva region news

Here is this editor’s take on news sources in English in the Lake Geneva region. The main source of news for most English speakers probably remains WRS, formerly WRG radio.

GenevaLunch has worked with
the station, helping with its interim website during the transition and
I, as the editor of GL, wrote a daily news blog for the WRS site until
this week. We agreed to suspend this while WRS continues to develop its
news coverage, because of concerns about duplication.

Meanwhile, we’re exploring new avenues of journalism partnership. WRS
is Swiss-wide and GenevaLunch is regional: I can’t speak for WRS but in
our discussions I think I can say we’ve viewed our news coverage as
complementary. GenevaLunch will be carrying the new WRS news feed as of
this week, on our home page.

There are two major regional newspapers that publish some news in English on their web site: 24 Heures and Tribune de Geneve, which share the English Corner.
I think they do an acceptable job – I would even say they have improved
these pages significantly – but Edipresse, which owns the papers and
the site, has a Swiss French editorial approach and any newspaper is
coloured by its editorial direction. This is not a criticism, but I
believe many of us prefer to have news presented with a stronger
Anglophone perspective and information provided by the voice of
experience: journalists who have covered this area for several years.
There is room for Edipresse and us, and GenevaLunch frequently points
to the two papers’ French texts as sources. This is part of our job of
helping English speakers become better integrated into the larger
community.

There are, in addition, a growing number of magazines and web sites,
some new and some old, just as there have been, for years, in this
region. When we feel a site is proving to be useful, over time, we add
it to our resources page, even if it provides us with some competition. This is the case with angloinfo, which is helpful to newcomers in particular.

Clearly, not everyone will
agree, but I don’t believe any of the magazines and new sites provide the level of news and
information that the English-speaking population here needs and wants. This is what GenevaLunch strives to bring you.

Over to you, to decide if we do it.

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