Berner Zeitung

• 1. Introduction

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  Berner Zeitung, the Swiss German-language daily whose name simply means "Journal of Bern," arrived on newsstands for the first time on the 3rd of January 1979. But the paper that readers picked up that day was not born from nothing. It carried within it the DNA of four separate newspapers, some dating back to the early nineteenth century, each rooted in the villages, valleys, and towns of Switzerland's Bernese heartland. How does a modern daily newspaper emerge from such a tangle of competing legacies? And what does it take to hold readers across an entire Swiss canton for decades? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. Four Papers, One Voice

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  The oldest thread in the Berner Zeitung story reaches back to 1834, when a publication called the Intelligenzblatt first began circulating in the region. By 1888, that paper had changed its name to the Berner Tagblatt. Running parallel to it was the Emmenthaler Nachrichten, founded in 1883, which served readers in the Emmenthal valley. Two other papers rounded out the quartet: the weekly newspaper of Emmenthal, which had been publishing since 1844, and the Neue Berner Zeitung, which launched in 1919. The convergence began in 1973, when the Emmenthaler Blatt and the Neue Berner Zeitung merged to create an early version of the Berner Zeitung. Four years later, in 1977, that combined paper merged again with the daily news that had grown out of the former Emmenthaler Nachrichten. The result was the Berner Nachrichten. When the Berner Nachrichten published its inaugural issue on the 3rd of January 1979, it carried a century and a half of regional journalism with it.

• 3. Editors Who Shaped the Paper

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  Peter Schindler took the helm as the paper's first editor-in-chief when the Berner Zeitung launched in 1979, guiding it through its formative years until 1982. Urs P. Gasche followed from 1982 to 1985, succeeded by Ronald Roggen, who held the role only briefly from 1985 to 1986. Beat Hurni then led the paper through its longest single stretch of editorial leadership, from 1987 to 1996, a period that coincided with some of the paper's strongest circulation growth. Andreas Z'Graggen took over in 1996 and served until 2005. The arrangement that came after was unusual: from 2006 to 2009, Markus Eisenhut and Michael Hug co-edited the paper together, a dual leadership model that ended when Eisenhut moved on to lead the Tages-Anzeiger. Behind the editorial leadership stood the paper's publisher, Charles von Graffenried, whose tenure ended with his death on the 4th of July 2012. The paper is now published by Tamedia and remains based in Bern.

• 4. A Region on the Page

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  The canton of Bern covers a vast and varied stretch of central Switzerland, and the Berner Zeitung has long tried to match that geography on its pages. The paper serves the Espace Mittelland region as well as the canton of Bern itself. To reach readers across that territory, it publishes regional editions through affiliated titles. Thun is served by the Thuner Tagblatt. Readers in the Bernese Oberland turn to the Berner Oberländer. Solothurn has its own edition in the form of the Solothurner Tagblatt. In December 2011, the publisher Espace Media announced a further consolidation, merging the Splitausgabe Oberaargau with the Langenthaler Tagblatt. The first issue of the combined BZ Langenthaler Tagblatt appeared on the 2nd of July 2012, extending the paper's footprint further across the region.

• 5. Circulation and Reach

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  In 1997, the Berner Zeitung distributed 134,153 copies per day. By 2003, that figure had climbed to 163,000. Two years later, in 2005, circulation reached 196,000, and by 2006 it had risen again to 215,707 copies. At its peak, in 2008, the paper was the third most read newspaper in all of Switzerland, with a circulation of 213,000. The years that followed brought a gradual decline. Circulation fell to 208,694 in 2009, then dropped further to 181,705 in 2010. By 2012, daily distribution stood at 174,162 copies. Despite that slide, the 2012 figure still placed Berner Zeitung among the largest daily newspapers in Switzerland and made it the leading newspaper in the canton of Bern, a position that speaks to the loyalty its regional readership maintained through a period of industry-wide contraction.