Culture coverage is "intact but endangered," according to study
Cultural reporting in Swiss media is considered "intact but endangered". The main reason for this is declining diversity due to increasing media concentration. This is the conclusion of a study by the Research Center for Public Sphere and Society Fög at the University of Zurich.
The study, entitled "Quality of Cultural Reporting. Investigation of the Status Quo in Switzerland" was published on Monday in German and French. For their study, researcher Franziska Oehmer and her colleague Daniel Vogler from the Fög evaluated 48 leading media from all three language regions in the period - from 2015 to 2019. Specific cultural media are not included.
In addition, the author and the author have applied a very broad concept of culture, which includes "all forms of expression of human life and society". On this basis, they find that cultural coverage accounts for about 10 percent of total coverage and that this proportion has remained constant over the period under study. Among other things, this results in the statement that cultural reporting in the Swiss media is "intact."
"At risk" it is because, for example, regional newspapers such as. Basel Newspaper, Bernese Newspaper, The Covenant and the Tages-Anzeiger form an association under the umbrella of the TX Group or Aargauer newspaper, Lucerne Newspaper and St.Galler Tagblatt under CH Media. Such concentrations mean that journalistic contributions in general, and thus also cultural contributions, are increasingly identical in all of these newspapers.
The study states that "due to the tight financial situation of journalism," it can be assumed that "the concentration of cultural content will increase rather than decrease in the near future. Particularly affected by this are "opinion-driven formats, above all reviews.
According to the study, this situation poses a problem for cultural professionals. It also sees a danger that dividing lines in society as a whole could deepen further, because critical cultural reporting would "degenerate into a luxury good.
With instead of against each other
Under the heading "What to do?" Oehmer and Vogler propose more "cooperation instead of opposition" between the players, for example a common infrastructure for the various platforms or, in terms of information processing, a broad-based news agency for cultural information.
The study was co-financed by CH-intercultur, formerly Schweizer Feuilleton-Dienst, which worked with the Keystone-SDA news agency as a cultural press service until 2020. CH-intercultur is now working on a model for cultural reporting and cultural criticism.
In addition, the problems of cultural reporting will be the topic of the conference "Cultural Reporting in Crisis - How Will Culture Reach the People in the Future? The conference is being organized by Swissfoundations, the umbrella organization of Swiss funding foundations, with the Federal Office of Culture on August 26. (SDA)
