Mark Dittli becomes NZZ editor-in-chief: the new boss who doesn't quite fit into the picture

The “Zyrizitig”, in German the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, is getting a new boss: Mark Dittli will take over from Eric Gujer on February 1, 2027. A small revolution: the position should actually be filled internally. Dittli has not previously been an editor on Falkenstrasse, not far from the Zurich lakeshore and the opera, where the editorial team is based. It's been a long time since we've had an external editor-in-chief again.

The financial and business journalist Dittli, who was born in Zurich in 1974, came to the industry via a detour: he did a commercial apprenticeship at the airline Swissair, the “biggest thing there was,” as his profile in Republic magazine puts it, studied business economics and joined the business newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft in 2000.

There he was a foreign correspondent in New York and editor-in-chief from 2012 to 2017. In 2019 he launched the financial magazine The Market with six partners, which the NZZ took over completely at the end of 2023. The board of directors' argument: Dittli understands AI, digital products and changing reading habits.

Dittli's CV doesn't quite fit into the NZZ image. In 2018 he wrote for the cooperatively organized online magazine Republik and temporarily co-directed its editorial team from June to autumn 2018. The Republic is considered left-wing to left-liberal in the Swiss media scene, and it has also criticized the NZZ on several occasions.

The NZZ, on the other hand, sees itself as a liberal, quality newspaper; However, under editor-in-chief Eric Gujer, critics increasingly perceived it as right-wing liberal to right-wing conservative.

Most recently, the favorite for the position of boss was Benedict Neff, the current head of foreign affairs and a publicist who Gujer built up as crown prince for years with experience in the Berlin office and at Axel Springer. This is also why, writes the left-wing weekly newspaper WOZ from Zurich, Dittli's election was "a defeat for NZZ General Eric Gujer, who would have liked to install a southpaw as his successor."

Headwinds were already coming from the right: in the Weltwoche, media columnist Kurt W. Zimmermann accused Dittli of the Republic period and assumed that he had a left-wing orientation. The NZZ itself speaks of a “clear liberal attitude”.

What in turn fits into the picture: With The Market, Dittli has built something that is doing surprisingly well in a crisis-ridden industry, from which the NZZ is not exempt.

When someone comes to the post, someone else has to go: This other person is Eric Gujer, who is not leaving the NZZ. He switches to the German edition as “editor”. There he has given the NZZ reach and weight in recent years and a noticeable proximity to the AfD.

A shift to the right was also noticeable in the Swiss edition under Gujer. Gujer liked to provoke and thus regularly set the Swiss left on edge: in July 2024 he titled a comment with “In terms of foreign policy, Kamala Harris is the bigger risk than Trump”, and in April 2018 he titled his Germany newsletter with “The AfD is a salutary shock for the Bundestag”. He was also controversial in the editorial team because of his leadership style.

Whether Dittli's taking office means an actual course correction or just a personnel reshuffle remains to be seen. As long as Gujer shapes the German edition, a fundamental realignment is not foreseeable.