The newspaper section “Letters to the Editors” has existed for a long time and served as a feedback tool by readers. This traditional way of giving a feedback still has weight, although it is subject to newsroom selection. But today, most letters to the editors are actually “emails to the editor” and this feedback possibility exists on most online sites of newspapers. But journalists often complain about the bulk of emails or online comments, which are very often written in a sloppy, non-reflexive way. With it, letters to the editor have experienced degradation. And today, the Internet, and especially the possibilities offered by Web 2.0, intensify the interactivities with the audience and transforms the contours of participation. Social media platforms are used more and more as “loudspeaker”, mostly by dissatisfied news users and are – quite often – a form of journalistic harassment. But journalists observe it, use it as a source, and collect comments on popular topics to re-use them in new articles. The audience – in rare cases – may thus influence the news selection (Keel et al., 2010).
But further reaching participation of the public in the process of journalism still is quite rare: a frequently employed possibility is the print of pictures or videos of so-called reader reporters by newspapers, for instance, in how the weather report of the Public Broadcasting SRG SSR is curated. The free paper 20Minuten is an exception, where feedback of the public to controversial topics is often is actively asked for and integrated in its news stories.
Nevertheless, a bulk of journalists express the importance of getting feedback and having civil society (or at least their audience) involved, but without possible interference. So, usually in the morning, the editorial staff is deciding, for example which reader stories, often emerging from strokes of fate, would be presented. Besides, further possibilities are used by media corporations today like invitations for readers or pupils to visit the editorial office, lectures by experts for the readership – for example used regularly by the NZZ – reader conferences, street interrogations, or online surveys about reader opinions towards controversial topics – often used by 20Minuten. But public involvement still has low priority, and a so-called open newsroom still does not exist in the Swiss media. At least, in the Handbook of Quality in the Media by Pietro Supino and Res Strehle, published by Tamedia in 2017, “interactivity with readership” is a topic that is regarded to be of value by digitalisation. They emphasise in an idealistic way, that the roles of journalists and readers would move towards being defined in a new way, and journalism would then change from didactic to dialogic communication. Therefore, the significance of the readers as suppliers of topics might potentially increase in future.
