The Keystone SDA will not come out of crisis mode. The Swiss news agency has been losing major customers and thus reliably calculable income for some time. Roughly summarized: “The overall trend for the Keystone SDA is negative,” says Linards Udris of the SZ. He is deputy head of research at the Research Center for Public Spheres and Society at the University of Zurich and co-editor of the yearbook “Quality of the Media”. The Swiss government is already providing financial support for individual Keystone services. Nevertheless, the Keystone management has to save further and is doing so where it should generally go fastest, but naturally causes resistance: with the staff. So time to ask: what about the future of the Swiss news agency?
In any case, the facts currently do not bode well: the approximately 200 employees of Keystone-SDA had new “personnel regulations” in June, confirmed Jann Jenatsch, deputy manager of the news agency, the SZ. Among other things, it is about losses in holiday entitlement, protection against dismissal and also compensation days for evening and weekend work.
For a long time it was not clear whether a “consultation process” would have to be initiated. This is a procedure under Swiss labor law that is initiated in the event of mass redundancies. This would have happened if the journalists had refused to sign the new regulations. But that was averted, says the Keystone-SDA. “The majority of employees have signed the personnel regulations.”
“Noticeable dissatisfaction” in the editorial office
Keystone-SDA has been trying to save on staff for a long time. In 2018, the entire editorial team went on strike for four days to defend themselves against the dismissals of editors over 60. Ultimately successful. At least since then, the relationship between editors and management has been considered bad. The Swiss industry service personal.com recently reported “noticeable dissatisfaction” in the editorial office. When asked about the tense atmosphere between the workforce and management, a spokesman for the agency dodged and left it with the brief answer: “We’re looking for a conversation.” Because: “It is precisely thanks to our excellent editorial staff that we can offer a good product that is well received by our customers.”
This sentence is intended to spread optimism, but it goes straight to the heart of the problem: the news agency has had fewer and fewer major customers for years. Three of the four large private media companies in the country are currently completely or partially dispensing with the agency offer and have canceled or reduced their subscription accordingly. The reason is the same for all of them: you don’t stand out from the competition with texts from the agency. Especially in online business, subscriptions can be generated much better with specially written articles. That’s why the houses prefer to invest in their own editorial offices rather than in the agency.
Since the beginning of 2021, for example, the The New Zurich Times (NZZ) without the agency’s texts, she only uses Keystone for the pictures. In order to look after a self-developed tool for news monitoring, she created positions. “We are moving with the times,” says an NZZ spokeswoman. The situation is similar with the print titles of CH Media, which include local newspapers such as the St. Gallen daily newspaper or the Lucerne newspaper belong. They also no longer subscribe to the agency texts. “In the digital world, readers only pay for information and reading material that they cannot get elsewhere for free,” explains Stefan Heini, spokesman for CH Media.
The online market “calls into question the concept of the news agency on a fundamental level”
The free medium, which is very important in Switzerland, goes the furthest 20 minutes of the TX Group, which has waived all of the agency’s text and image services in German- and French-speaking Switzerland since January 2021. Nevertheless, it is possible to report the relevant news quickly and precisely “and to illustrate it with videos and pictures in our own visual language,” says one 20 minutes-Speaker. They have set up their own video and photo agency, which currently employs twelve people. In addition, they have strengthened their own newsdesk. The Keystone-SDA offers a good basic service, “however, the online market questions the concept of the news agency on a fundamental level”. It turns out for 20 minutes there is little point in buying expensive content that can also be read in the same way as the competition. “Like all players in the media market, Keystone-SDA will have to think about its future business model.”
However, the problems of the Keystone-SDA are also due to the peculiarities of the Swiss media market: “The market in Switzerland is small and is further divided into small markets,” explains media scientist Udris. The language differences within Switzerland alone made the agency’s business difficult. After all, she has to deliver in German, French and Italian. This is precisely why the service is important for the diversity of reporting in the Swiss media landscape. But depending on the corporate strategy, one or the other local story from a certain part of Switzerland no longer plays a role for some publications.
The attempt to make the agency less dependent on its own income through political means has so far failed. In February, the Swiss voted against the “package of measures in favor of the media” in a referendum. The Keystone-SDA was part of the proposal and had hoped – ultimately in vain – for more government support. Jann Jenatsch from Keystone-SDA had already announced in 2021, about a year before the referendum, in an interview with the Swiss industry service Small report announced: “The support of the federal government is becoming more and more important.” The state can already compensate for an annual deficit in individual areas with a maximum of four million Swiss francs. To do this, the agency must continue to offer certain uneconomical services, such as regional culture reporting.
If the subscription income continues to decline, a slow, creeping decline of the agency is to be feared, forecasts communication scientist Udris to the SZ. The only way out: “Readers’ willingness to pay on the Internet is increasing, and the media houses themselves are no longer under such great pressure to save.” But that is crystal ball reading. For him, there will be no way around the expansion of public funding in the future, but more than a basic offer will probably not be financed in this way. However, the agency will not disappear completely, he suspects. “The Keystone-SDA is too important for Switzerland.”