Chronicle
Weather
Webcams
Name/Abbr.
Facts
Government
Cantons
History
Geography
Mountains
Nature
Cities
Languages
Religions
People
Sports
Economy
Workplace
Education
Science
Tourist Info
Travelguide
Destinations
Transport
Architecture
Monuments
Glaciers
Hiking
Arts
Music
Literature
Photos

News, Media and Press

Major Swiss Newspapers

Please note that all major Swiss newspapers are published in one of Switzerland's four national languages (German, French, Italian or Rumantsch). The number of newspapers available and of newspapers presented here roughly corresponds to the number of Swiss people speaking the corresponding language.

Online-Editions of Major Swiss Newspapers

Figures in brackets: number of people reading this paper every day (total population: 7,100,000)

Swiss Newspapers in German     Swiss Newspapers in French
  • 20 Minuten (948,000)
    focusing on young urban readers.
    Distributed free of charge at railway stations
    and designed to be read within 20 minutes,
    for example in commuter trains.
  • Blick (717,000) easy-to-read newspaper
    (with many pictures and big headlines)
  • Tages-Anzeiger (Zurich 567,000)
    balanced quality newspaper
  • Berner Zeitung (Bern 405,000)
    regional newspaper
  • Mittelland-Zeitung (389,000)
  • NZZ Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich 331,000)
    traditional quality newspaper,
    with a deliberately old-fashioned layout,
    still explicitly presenting shareholder views
  • Neue Luzerner Zeitung (Lucerne 292,000)
    balanced regional quality newspaper
    with local editions for cantons Uri, Schwyz, Obwalden, Nidwalden, Zug
  • Die Südostschweiz (Chur 249,000)
    regional newspaper
  • St. Galler Tagblatt (St. Gallen 229,000)
    regional newspaper
  • Basler Zeitung (Basel 210,000)
    balanced regional quality newspaper
  • Der Bund (Bern)
    balanced regional quality newspaper
  • Aargauer Zeitung (Aargau)
    regional newspaper
  • Thurgauer Zeitung (Thurgau)
    regional newspaper
     

Swiss newspapers in Italian  

Swiss newspapers in Rumantsch/Romansh
  • La Quotidiana
    Rumantsch daily, founded in 1998
    owned by German language newspaper "Die Südostschweiz"

Most newspapers in Switzerland do have a long tradition reaching back far into the 19th century. All major Swiss cities and towns had two or even three rivaling local newspapers presenting the views of the major parties in the region: liberals (entrepreneurs), conservatives (craftsmen and farmers) and in industrial centers also socialists (industrial workers).

After World War II Switzerland's national public radio and television were forced by political decisions to present balanced and independent news reports and they met this challenge very well. The changes towards a more open and dynamic society common to all western European nations after the 1968 students' protests went exactly in the same direction: people increasingly wanted to get informed instead of being indoctrinated by partisan opinion leaders.

The partisan print media found themselves confronted with changing expectations as well as with increasing amounts of information to be selected and presented. By the 1980's it had became too expensive to produce so many quality newspapers for such a little market of only 7 million inhabitants. The solution was a concentration process leaving only one quality newspaper per region usually presenting issues from different points of view.

Remaining twin newspapers in a region usually are economically interdependant (as in Bern and Ticino) and the concentration process is likely to go into a next round merging larger regions as more and more Swiss people live in one region and work in another which reduces the identification with a small region. So far, only Zurich's elitarian newspaper NZZ has successfully resisted a merger and a transformation into a multi-faceted forum newspaper. Nevertheless its editors compete with their rivals of Tages-Anzeiger in gaining control over the remaining smaller newspapers.


Major Swiss periodicals


For a complete directory of Swiss print media see www.zeitung.ch (print media in German language) and a subsection thereof for Swiss print media in French and Italian

Topics Moved to Archive





Switzerland from A to Z
Short quotations allowed but with precise declaration of origin (Link).
Reproduction of substantial parts and pictures in printed or electronic form only with explicit written consent by the editor.