Swiss Political Correspondence
The Swiss political correspondence (SPK) was 1917-1993 in addition to the Swiss News Agency (SDA), the second national news agency of Switzerland . It distributed information from politics, business, society and culture in the national languages German, French and Italian. The SPK was based in the federal city of Bern .
history
At the end of the 19th century, two major European news agencies dominated the Swiss market: Havas and Wolff . On January 1, 1895, the Swiss Dispatch Agency (SDA) became the first national news agency to go into service.
In 1917, bourgeois journalists founded the Swiss Mittelpresse (SMP) as the second national news agency , which was financed by the economy and vehemently represented bourgeois positions in voting battles. In the 1930s, the SMP oriented itself in terms of personnel and content to fascist currents, which was not conducive to its reputation.
The Russian philosopher, writer and publicist Iwan Iljin , who had lived in exile in Switzerland since 1938, wrote for the Schweizerische Mittelpresse 215 under the code names Peter Just , PJ , KP , RK , Walter Tannen , Hans Grau or Anonymus until his death in 1954 in Zollikon Article on the Soviet Union.
In 1947, the SMP was taken over by the Society for the Promotion of the Swiss Economy (today Economiesuisse ), which implemented far-reaching changes in personnel and content and renamed the news agency to Swiss Political Correspondence (SPK).
In the 1980s, the SPK was consistently professionalized, the service was opened up ideologically, the editorial staff was massively enlarged and the first Swiss journalists to be equipped with mobile computers and modems. In 1984 the SPK opened regional offices in Eastern Switzerland, and later in all other regions of Switzerland, thus creating strong competition for the SDA. As a result, a significant number of regional newspapers terminated the service of the SDA and went over to the SPK. In 1992 the SPK had 35 employees and an annual budget of around 7.5 million francs.
In 1993, the Swiss Political Correspondence lost its most important donor because the Society for the Promotion of the Swiss Economy withdrew from its sponsorship. The last SPK editor-in-chief, Hansjörg Schenker, wanted to build up a new sponsorship and thus save the agency, but this did not succeed. At the end of 1993, the Swiss Political Correspondence closed its service.
Web links
- Andreas Windlinger: Swiss Political Correspondence (SPK). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .