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National newspapers

The daily newspaper sector has been under a lot of pressure in the past years. After a promising start in the mid-nineties, innovation on the web from traditional newspapers has been slow. The country's best-selling newspaper, Blick, runs a rather uninteresting website that features, as the paper itself, mostly sensationalist stories and has a few web 2.0 features such as commenting and rating of articles. The Zurich-based Tages-Anzeiger, which from time to time calls itself "Switzerland's best-selling quality newspaper", has a similarly uninspiring presence on the web. Even after a recent redesign, the site looks like a relict from the late nineties. The content consists of selected articles from today's print edition, a lot of hardly edited news agency infos, and some blogs, which are marginalised on the site and, it seems, not widely read. The website of the also Zurich-based Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), which has less circulation than the Tages-Anzeiger, but a bigger international renommee, is far more popular. It underwent a complete redesign in July, which allowed for more flexibility in online publishing, but got mixed design and usability reviews. As the Tages-Anzeiger, the NZZ only puts part of its print edition online, and only for a limited time. The redesign allowed readers to comment on every story, although comments are moderated, and it often takes several hours until they are approved. The NZZ has also started to experiment with "blogs" from some of its foreign correspondents. While the quality of this content is excellent, the mere fact that the blogs do not have a feed renders the experiment completely irrelevant. The NZZ runs also two independent blogging platforms (with feeds): On NZZvotum, politicians from all parties write about their goals, and on NZZcampus, students from different universities blog about their life. In the months before the national elections in October, the conversation on NZZvotum was very active, with a unsurprising downturn since then. At the time of writing, there were rumours of a re-launch of the platform with different content.

One of the reasons that the traditional daily newspapers have been under pressure are the free dailies. The biggest of them, 20 Minuten (which is, as the Tages-Anzeiger, owned by the Tamedia Group), is now by far the most-read newspaper in the country. A year ago, the Ringier media group (which owns Blick), launched the free daily heute, which is published in the afternoon. In September 2007, media entrepreneur Sacha Widgorovits, who was once editor-in-chief of 20 Minuten, launched yet another free daily, called .ch. This prompted the Tamedia Group to announce the launch of News (in December) which would compete with .ch. Together with the Le Matin bleu, a free daily published in the french-speaking part, the estimated circulation of all the free dailies amounts to almost 3 million - in a country with a population of 7 million. Most observers agree that this situation will not be sustainable, and that in the long run, only one of the free dailies will be able to survive.

All the free dailies run websites, with 20 Minuten being by far the most successful. With an online staff of about 30 people (which heavily exceeds the online staff of all other newspapers), it quickly became one of the most-visited websites in Switzerland. It features a lot of multimedia content and community options. 20 Minuten also tries to link its print edition to additional content on its website, and regularly prints excerpts from user discussions in its online forums. The "innovative" online content of heute, apart from some blogs, is limited to putting its daily issue on the web as a PDF.

Local newspapers

The online presence of the local newspapers in the german-speaking is even more limited. The Basler Zeitung, the Bund, the Berner Zeitung and the Mittelland-Zeitung have all websites that are hardly worth mentioning. The picture gets slightly more interesting when one looks on the other site of the Röschtigraben - the line that divides the german-speaking part of the country. The Tribune de Genève hosts a blogging platform for its readers, whose blogs are prominently featured on the Tribune's website as well as in the printed paper. It also publishes some podcasts. Le Matin, which is, as the Tribune, owned by the Edipresse Group, has at least a decently designed webpage, which vaguely reminds of the Guardian's website.

Magazines

Political and news magazines have also been under a lot of pressure lately. This summer, the Facts magazine and weekly economics newspaper Cash, both owned by the Tamedia group, ceased to exist in print. Cash still operates its website with lots of multimedia content and publishes a daily free paper called Cash daily. The Facts website was recently reborn as sort of a Swiss Digg clone. Meanwhile, the weekly published Weltwoche continues to be successful, mainly because it stirs political controversy by siding with the right-wing populist party SVP. Contrary to that, the website of the Weltwoche can hardly be called controversial - in fact, it is rather dull and boring.

Again, the online innovators can be found on the other side of the Röschtigraben: The Ringier-owned weekly L'Hebdo won much praise when, during the riots in French banlieues in 2005, it started the Bondyblog, where its reporters wrote directly from the banlieues. The blog still exists, although it is now operated by a couple of joung citizen-journalists in France, and L'Hebdo only remains a partner to the blog. More recently, L'Hebdo started Blog & Breakfast to cover the Swiss national elections which took place on October 21. Hebdo reporters visited candidates for the national parliament and stayed at their place for one night. The blog featured a lot of video and photo content. All posts where geotagged and could be browsed via an interactive map.

It is worth mentioning shortly the homepages of the magazines published by the Tages-Anzeiger and the NZZ: The Magazin, a weekly supplement to the Tages-Anzeiger, has recently redesigned its website. The new site is based on wiki technology, but readers can so far only collaborate by writing comments on the articles (which, at least, are all published in their entirety at the same time as in the print edition). NZZ Folio, which is each month devoted to one specific subject, can also be accessed online, and is additionally published as a downloadable audio version.