Closeness and distance

This article compares the form of TV news reporting in the American “CBS Evening News” and the Swiss “Tagesschau” from their beginning until today. It draws particular attention to the ‘culturality’ of text types — a term that will be introduced in the first part. The analysis focuses on local, temporal and emotional closeness in news packages and illustrates how the two shows stage closeness in different and changing ways. Although a partial homogenization can be observed, the notion of a continuous americanization is rejected. The results will be analysed in the perspective of the TV news shows considering factors such as the text repertoire and overall format of the show. Discussing the results I will argue that the concept of ‘journalistic culture’ is helpful to conceptualize and understand the form of news. While the analysis cannot decide to what degree single influencing factors are at work, it further develops some common assumptions (like national characteristics of text types or the influence of commercialization).