A Lesson in Swiss

By the cautious standards of Swiss journalism, Blick, a brash tabloid published in Zurich, does everything wrong. It is tasteless, sensational and sometimes inaccurate. Its headlines scream. It runs prize contests but no editorial page. Its very existence offends the police and the government; some of its readers wrap its gaudy pages in a more august paper to hide their shameful habit from disapproving eyes. But almost every day more and more Swiss resort to this sub- terfuge. After four years of life, Blick proudly claims to have become Switzerland's second largest daily.

Blowing Their Pfiffe. For all Blick's growing popularity, many readers remain furtive and embarrassed. The papers they are used to are unexcitable, reflective, slow-moving and often a little dull. Agence Telegraphique Suisse, the national wire service, sometimes stews over stories for days, letting them ripen before release--and no client complains. The news can wai: it is best to be sure. The philosophy is one with which Blick could hardly agree less.

Founded in 1959 by Ringier Verlag, a Zofingen publishing house, Blick wasted no time violating the national sense of propriety. "A foreign pest on national soil," cried one member of Parliament, after nosy Blick reporters demanded more than government handouts; orders went out that shut every official door on Blick's newsmen. Three Lucerne businessmen circulated a flyer labeled Pfiff--which means the skirl of a whistle, as blown by a referee calling a foul--that wishfully pronounced Blick dead. Instead, Blick's Lucerne circulation jumped from 900 to 2,000.

Blick was the only Swiss newspaper to carry a picture of a wife killer from the town of Langenthal. When the man, gratified by this unaccustomed publicity, turned himself in to Blick, the paper printed his story--to the stern disapproval of the rest of the press. Moved by impulses totally alien to the competition, Blick last winter invited 40 needy children from West Berlin to ski in Valais--and picked up the tab. It asked readers for money to buy beds for aged and improvident Swiss. When readers responded generously, other papers blew their Pfiffe. It was not seemly, they said, to admit the existence of poverty.

Getting the Message. Whether Blick has the proper approach to newspapering in Switzerland is something for the Swiss themselves to decide. Certainly Blick still has the government against it; the authorities canceled the lucrative contract under which Blick's publishers had printed a portion of the national telephone book for 17 years.

Still, readers keep piling up. Each day they buy 140,000 copies of Blick, a quantity that puts it within close reach of Tagesanzeiger (160,000), the country's largest daily. And for all their opposition, some papers are getting the message. Already, Basel's National-Zeitung has copied Blick's combination of big heads and big pictures. Said Jean Chevalier, assistant editor of the French-language Journal de Geneve: "If the Swiss-German press were not so dry and stodgy, Blick would never have come into existence."

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