No fewer than four leaders leave the Republic media project
Four management members are leaving the Republik media project: Constantin Seibt, Christof Moser and Clara Vuillemin will remain on board from the original founding team. In its first year, Republik posted a loss of 2.8 million Swiss francs. At the end of October, Managing Director Susanne Sugimoto, Chairman of the Board Laurent Burst, President of the Cooperative Nadja Schnetzler and Chief Financial Officer François Zosso will bid farewell to Republik.
This has simple reasons, writes the Republic in its newsletter on Friday, which was sent out together with its first annual report. The Herculean task of building up the company has now been completed. What is needed now is a change of generations. In short: less founder-era romanticism and less pioneering spirit, but more day-to-day business and better organization.
"Personnel-intensive business"
Financially, the Republic as expected in its first year: it posted a loss. According to the annual report, the Group posted a loss of 2.85 million Swiss francs. The largest expense item, at 3.5 million Swiss francs, was personnel expenses. "Journalism is annoyingly a personnel-intensive business," the annual report states. The consolidated equity at the end of the fiscal year amounts to 1.8 million francs. With the existing funds, operations are secured until January.
Then comes the real cliff: the 14,000 memberships from crowdfunding and the 3,000 up to the launch have to be renewed. The empirical value for comparable projects is a renewal rate of 50 percent. The Republic has set a goal of maintaining 66 percent - two out of three memberships. "If we drop below 50 percent, we will bleed because we will have to cut our costs."
4.5 million characters published
In its first year, the Republic a total of 435 articles with a total volume of around 4.5 million characters. In terms of membership structure, the Republic clearly Zurich-oriented: Almost half of the supporters live in the canton of Zurich. Subscribers from the Mittelland region are the second most common, at around 18 percent, followed in third place by those from northwestern Switzerland, at around 14 percent. (SDA)
