Edgar Junod

Edgar Junod (born April 16, 1883 in Sainte-Croix , Canton of Vaud , † October 16, 1955 in Geneva ) was a Swiss journalist and manager . He ran the Tribune de Genève from 1918 until his death .

Life

Edgar Junod was born into modest circumstances as the son of a watchmaker who died prematurely. He had an older unmarried sister, Marguerite, and a younger one who had died before him, and a younger brother who had died young of fever in the Belgian Congo , where he worked as an engineer. After the father's death, the family moved to Lausanne , where the widow ran a hostel for pensioners. Junod remained very close to his native community, he had a holiday home there, to which he often retreated.

Junod studied law in Lausanne , Paris and Munich and received his doctorate in Lausanne in 1907.

Career

Junod began his journalistic career in 1907 with a stint in the Basel regional office of the Swiss dispatch agency . In 1910, Édouard Secretan , editor-in-chief of the Gazette de Lausanne and colonel , appointed him to his newspaper and made him deputy. As a close associate of Secrétan, he was also involved in the so-called Obersten affair . Junod ran the newspaper during Secretan's long illness until his death in 1917.

During the First World War , Junod served as a captain at the military tribunal. On February 1, 1918, he succeeded Edouard Bauty as director-editor-in-chief of the Tribune de Genève and in 1919 was elected to the board of directors of the publishing company "Société Anonyme pour la Tribune de Genève". After the war the newspaper got into a serious crisis. Junod introduced the reforms that led out of the crisis: Among other things, in 1918 he reduced the daily five editions to two and in 1922 banned the advertisements from the front page to the interior and made them a magazine. In 1931 he was elected delegate of the board of directors.

At the end of 1937 Junod gave up the position of director-editor-in-chief to Gaston Bridel and was appointed director general. In 1951 he was also elected Chairman of the Board of Directors. He was one of the founders of the Geneva Newspaper Publishers' Association, which he presided over for several periods, and helped to formulate and implement the collective agreement between publishers and journalists. He was a member of the committee of the “Union romande des journaux” and the Swiss Association of Newspaper Publishers.

As a journalist, Junod had a major impact on political and social life in Geneva with his short, concise articles.

Trivia

Junod's insistence on proper clothing and shaving was legendary. Several times he sent badly shaven journalists to the barber. The employees respected and admired him, which manifested itself in their designation Junods as “our great patron”. Junod was also a hunter and amateur footballer. He was a lover of poetry and could recite hundreds of verses by French poets from memory.

Awards

• Commandeur de la Legion d'honneur

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Edgar Junod. The journalist in maison. In: Tribune de Genève. October 17, 1955, p. 1.
2. ^ Jean Malche: Edgar Junod. L'administrateur délégué. In: Tribune de Genève. October 17, 1955, p. 1.
3. ↑ Paul du Bochet: patron Notre. In: Tribune de Genève. October 17, 1955, p. 3.