In this episode, we welcome Veronica DeVore.
Veronica is a Swiss-American dual national, living in Bern and working as Head of Audience at SWI swissinfo.ch. We speak with Veronica about her background, her experience of living here in Switzerland having grown up in the US, about the Swiss media landscape and about how certain stories in the news here may resonate with a global audience.
Daniel
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Expert Guide to Your Life in Switzerland. This is Daniel from Rigby. We're a staffing and IT-services company, based in Zurich. And in today's episode, we'll be speaking with Veronica DeVore. Veronica is a Swiss-American dual national, living in Bern and working as Head of Audience at SWI swissinfo.ch. We'll be speaking with Veronica about her background, her experience of living here in Switzerland having grown up in the US, about the Swiss media landscape and about how certain stories in the news here may resonate with a global audience. So Veronica, welcome.
Veronica DeVore
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Daniel
So, could we begin by asking you to tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you here?
Sure. So I, as you said, I'm a Swiss-American, dual citizen. And I was born in Zurich, while my parents were living here, my mother's from Bern originally. But then quite quickly, after that, I moved to the US where my dad is from, and settled in there and grew up in Wisconsin, which is north of Illinois, south of Canada, sort of in the region of Chicago.
Right. And actually, your father's mother was also Swiss, right? So you have some Swiss roots on both sides.
Veronica DeVore
I do. So three of my four grandparents are Swiss, and I once did one of those DNA tests you can send in to see your ancestry. And it was pretty boring, in my case, mostly from Switzerland. And yes, my maternal grandmother, married my grandfather, who was an American soldier, and moved to the US. So she came from Switzerland as well, in addition to my two grandparents, who were living and working here in Bern.
Daniel
I think that's quite an interesting story about how your paternal grandmother met your grandfather. Could you tell us that, please?
Veronica DeVore
Yeah, sure. So it's it is quite a family, a family legend? Well, it's true. But we, we tell it often in our family, because it's so interesting, especially in today's times, where we're connected so easily over the internet and everything else.
But my grandfather was fighting in World War Two, mostly in Austria. And then at the end of the war, the American soldiers, the GIs came on a tour, some of them through Switzerland. And he was on that tour. And as part of it, they organised a dance or a ball, I guess, as they called it at the Hotel Bellevue, in Bern, for all of the soldiers. And of course, they invited people from Bern to go, and my grandmother and her friend decided they wanted to go, and my grandparents met there. So they met, they danced once or twice, and they hit it off. And then my grandfather went back to the US, my grandmother stayed here. They kept up correspondence through letters. And eventually, she decided to marry him and go over to the US and settle there. And in the rest of her life, I think she came back to Switzerland, maybe two at most, three more times.
Daniel
It's really an amazing story.
Veronica DeVore
Yeah, it's it's quite a quite a story.
Daniel
But what about you? What brought you to Switzerland then?
Veronica DeVore
So I had been living and working in the US. First in Wisconsin, as I said, then for a bit in Minnesota and Minneapolis. And then I moved to Washington, DC, and worked there as a journalist for PBS, which is the public media outlet in the US. And then I was during all of that time, I was actually a SwissInfo reader, because it's it's a service aimed at the international audience, also Swiss people living abroad. That was me. So I was reading the platform and at one point saw that they were advertising for a journalist position. And I decided to apply. It was always kind of in the back of my mind to, at some point, try living in Europe, try living in Switzerland, because I had the ability to do so. But I, I kind of knew, also given the high cost of living in Switzerland, I couldn't just kind of come and see what happened. I felt like I needed to have a job lined up, of course, and this is a really good opportunity. So I jumped at it and here I am.
Daniel
Okay. And one thing I think that might interest our listeners is how you and your family qualified to come over here. So you held on to your Swiss passport, after having been born in Zurich, right Veronica?
Veronica DeVore
Yes, yep, I was born with both citizenships.
Daniel
But your husband is an American?
Veronica DeVore
Yes.
Daniel
So he had to apply for what's called the 'family reunification visa'. Is that right?
Veronica DeVore
Exactly. So, we were living together just outside of Washington DC when we decided to make this move. It was all quite, quite sudden And then we also decided to get married quite quickly. So we planned our wedding in maybe a month. Of course, we'd been together for a long time at that point, so it was kind of natural. And what we wanted to do anyway, but we planned it, we upped the timeline let's say, so that he could join me here without much complication. And we're really happy we did it that way anyway. It was a lovely wedding and a great time, but then doing that allowed him to join me just a few months after I moved here on this family reunification visa.
Daniel
Right. And with that visa, he can live and work here just fine, just like anybody else, right?
Veronica DeVore
He can't exactly so we it's been 10 years now. But at first he came then on a B permit, which some listeners may be familiar with. And then after, I think five years, he could have applied for citizenship over the family facilitated naturalisation, but he didn't do it at that stage. He then instead upgraded to a C permit, which is permanent residency. So he has that now.
Daniel
Right. And how was your experience of settling into life in Switzerland?
Veronica DeVore
Yeah, so it was a bit bizarre at first, because I would come here every summer to visit my family as a kid. So that was my experience with the country. My cousins and my aunts and uncles on my mom's side of the family all live here. And my grandmother did as well, until she passed away. So we visited every summer for four to six weeks, I learned the language, Swiss German, as a child, so I knew it and I practised it with my family. And so all of that, of course, really helped me when I moved here. I felt not like an outsider completely, but I felt like I belonged in that sense. But there were other aspects where I really had to learn the ropes. I just clearly had never lived here before, I'd only visited.
Daniel
Yeah, there are some things that you just have to learn as you go along.
Veronica DeVore
Exactly, exactly. So one example, that I'm sure everybody has a story like this, I've come to learn, is regarding trash disposal. So, I was by myself the first few months. I was subletting an apartment from a student who was going travelling and kind of on his way out the door. And he said, 'Oh, right, right, right trash. So, you know, put it in these blue bags and then put it to the street. And, and then paper, you know, something, something about paper and bins and goodbye'. That was what I got from that conversation. And then in the US, we just put all of our recycling material into one bin. So the paper the glass, the aluminium.
Daniel
Yes, it's the same in the UK.
Veronica DeVore
The same in the UK? Yeah, so a lot of countries have this kind of one stop system. And it came time for me to dispose of my paper and I remembered this something about bins and I thought 'okay, so there are bins across the street, and they have paper in them, so that must just be where we all put our paper'. So, I put mine in there. And, of course I think that night right away, I get a knock on the door and yeah, angry man, they're very angry, who says I found your name on these papers and how dare you put them in my business, you know, the disposal for my business and I could fine you and you know, all of this and of course with time I learned the system, I read the Abfallhandbuch, the handbook. I found what I needed to know but in that instance I kind of realised, okay, first of all, he was thrown by the fact that I spoke with him in Swiss-German. And that made him more angry I think, because he thought 'how could someone who who speaks the language not know this?' And second of all, I just thought, boy, you know, have I made a mistake? Do I really fit in here? You know, it kind of triggered all these feelings at the beginning. But you know, of course that sorted itself out.
And then the second kind of funny incident was I was shopping at Migros. I had shopped there when I visited of course, as a as a kid, as a as a young person, but never for alcohol. And I needed some, or wanted some wine I think and went in and asked, I couldn't find it, and asked one of the employees 'where is your wine?' And of course, Migros doesn't carry alcohol famously. And she looked at me like I had landed on an alien spacecraft. Just 'why are you speaking to me in Bernese German asking me where the wine is?'
Daniel
Right. That's what makes that story so interesting is because if a foreign person went there speaking English, then the staff would think 'well, they don't know any better'. But then you go there speaking Bernese Swiss-German, accent free. That must have been quite confusing for them.
Veronica DeVore
It was confusing all around. But once again, lesson learned.
Daniel
And could you tell us a little bit about your role at SwissInfo, and how SwissInfo operates?
Veronica DeVore
Sure. So over The years I've had five roles, I think, at swift info, so many of those who work there, of course, the majority are journalists. So they're working across the 10 languages that we serve. Actually, now 11, we have a small Ukrainian offering as well, newly. But, so I was working at the beginning as a journalist in the English department, writing news and features in English. And then later on, I became the deputy head of that department, and then the head and then I eventually transitioned to managing, or helping to manage, the organisation as a whole. So, all 10 languages and since earlier this year, I've had a role, called Head of Audience. And titles are hard, it's hard. People don't always know what they mean. But in this case, what it means is I work closely with the editor-in- chief, and we work together to ensure that the content that we produce is really meeting the members of our audience, our readers, the communities we serve, where they are, so they may be finding us reading us on platforms other than our homepage probably are, and that through various means that we have, that we're really hearing their questions, their needs, and understanding how we can best serve them.
Daniel
Okay. And, if I'm not mistaken, you're looking at the readership internationally. And you can spot patterns, right, Veronica, in the types of stories that people are reading in different places?
Veronica DeVore
Exactly. So that's a big part of my job and our job is, you know, we have data available in this great internet age, we have a lot of data, you know, from Google Analytics, or from other analytics tools that show us where our traffic is coming from, how long people are spending with our content and many other metrics as well. And one of the things that the data can tell us is, you know, geographically, where are people reading what content, or consuming what content? And so that's, of course, very informative for us, because we're aiming our content, again, at these 10 language regions, that covers a huge swath of the globe. So it potentially covers 80% of the world's population, the languages that we publish in. But we want to know, you know, more specifically, okay, what, what topics are resonating with people in Japan, for example, or in the Arabic speaking world, or elsewhere in Europe, and the data that we have access to and that you know, most or all media organisations have access to, can really help us to pinpoint that and again, serve those readers better, understand, you know, what they'd like to read more of, or where they may still have questions, or what they're particularly interested in knowing out of Switzerland?
Daniel
Yeah, I think that's so interesting. And are there any insights that you could share about the topics that people are interested in based on geography?
Veronica DeVore
Yeah, so one thing, we've noticed, that's quite interesting. I mentioned Japan earlier. So in that context, there are, Japan has an ageing population, as does much of the Western world, but in Japan, it's especially, it's especially significant. And, in part because of that, there's a really large interest around assisted suicide and end-of-life topics. So Switzerland, of course, is one of actually few countries that that allow assisted suicide, also allow so called assisted suicide, tourism, for lack of a better term, people who come here for that service. And so there's a great deal of interest in that in Japan. And we have a feature on swissinfo where we enable readers to debate or exchange on a topic with each other and with our journalists. So, we'll pose a question, a journalist who's covered a topic in depth will pose a question to our readership. And then a sort of discussion ensues about that, across all 10 languages. So there's a feature that allows for the auto-translation of everyone's answers so that they can really discuss with each other across languages.
So, our most popular so-called debate in this format for months and months has been on this question of assisted suicide, which, you know, is a controversial question. How should the end of life look? What options should be available? And this clearly resonated with our readers, especially in Japan and this debate continues to be popular, continues to be read, people continue to participate, not just in Japan but around the world. And that's really shown us how, how important it is that we keep covering this topic from Switzerland, where it is, the conversation around that I think is unique in the world. And there's, there's a couple other examples of some topics that resonate in different parts of the world.
For example, in the Arabic-speaking world, the opposite is true of Japan. The population is generally quite young, a lot of young people, they're thinking about their education, their career, their future prospects. And so, for example, we cover the Swiss vocational training system quite a bit. This is, you know, where young people can leave secondary school and instead of going to university, they can pursue education and a trade, or do an apprenticeship to learn a skill rather than going to university. So there's a great deal of interest in that. And in other places, too, but particularly in the Arabic-speaking world, where, as I said, there are a lot of young people, they're thinking about, options available to them options in other parts of the world, are sort of generally interested in these topics. And then, finally, one of our key groups that we target with our content that we serve, is the Swiss people living abroad, there are nearly 800,000 of them. So it's essentially a 10th of the Swiss population, they can also vote for life. So they're a very significant voting bloc, and they've even few take into account their votes, they've swung elections, or rather referendums on on some key topics over the years. And we can see geographically, for example, there's, there's a large Swiss abroad, population living in France, around Lyon. There are large populations in the United States, as well as some parts of South America, Argentina, Brazil. And so, we really aim to serve them with the topics that they've told us that they are following, particularly around banking, you know, can they have access to a bank account in Switzerland? E-voting, you know, how, what's the best way for them to participate in elections and referendums? And, of course, they follow what is happening in the political conversation in Switzerland as well.
Daniel
Right. And with the tool that you're using, a user can read and respond to a thread in their own language.
Veronica DeVore
Exactly. So when it comes to this debate product or this debate platform that I mentioned, it's exactly that. So we could pose a question to all of our 10 language audiences around assisted suicide, assisted suicide, for example, or other topics, political topics, and the readers can read that question in their own language and respond in their own language. But then, if you read and respond in English, for example, somebody else can look at that question and your response in Italian in auto-translation, and also respond to you in Italian, and then you can in turn read it in English. So this is kind of the way that it works, allowing for this cross-linguistic or cross-cultural exchange.
Daniel
There's a few cool tools that you've been working on. Another, I think, is SWIplus, could you tell us a little bit about that?
Veronica DeVore
Sure. So SWIplus is an app that we launched fairly recently, within the last several years in currently available in German, English, Italian and French. So you can find it in the app store. And it's aimed at the Swiss population living abroad. As I mentioned, that's a big target group for us. We do a lot with and for those readers, but what it offers is a daily briefing from one of our journalists. So, the journalist is following the news out of Switzerland that day, they write a little sort of digest of what they're watching and what the most important stories of the day are. And that goes out in the app at I believe it's 5pm Swiss time every day. And then, in addition to that, the app offers access to these debates which I mentioned, and a host of other resources as well, all revolving around Switzerland, and news and information out of Switzerland and kind of keeping in touch with Switzerland.
Daniel
And you've worked in the media in two different countries. Is there anything about the Swiss media landscape and how it works that you've noticed, which might be slightly different from that of other countries?
Veronica DeVore
Yeah, so as I mentioned, I've worked in public media, so public, publicly-funded media organisations in both the US and Switzerland. And so there I've noticed some interesting kind of differences about how the landscapes are and what what organisations exist and how big of a presence that public media is in both of these markets. And in Switzerland, it's a very significant presence. So there's a really high-quality offering across basically five units. So there are four units within the country that serve the German, French, Romansh and Italian-speaking populations. And then of course swissinfo is the fifth unit and we serve the rest of the world, essentially. So we're the international service. And, as listeners will know, the formerly known as Bilag licence fee, now known as Serafe, that's a fee, or I guess some might call it a tax that's paid by every household in order to support this public media system. And that model doesn't exist in the US, it's, you know, their public media is a much smaller piece of the media puzzle. And there's no funding to that degree of it. So because that funding doesn't exist, it is a voice in the ecosystem but it's a much smaller voice. There's a lot more happening in the private space. That's kind of a key difference that I noticed coming here, was just the presence, the quality of public media. And I was fascinated to learn that the offering - radio, TV, online, by law is mandated to be equal for the citizens speaking all of these languages, because Switzerland has four, four languages, four official languages. And so that, you know, is why it takes so much to keep this public media offering running, because you essentially have to finance it, you know, times four within the country and then plus swissinfo which we don't have the broadcast piece were much, much smaller, but we do have the online offering.
Daniel
And you mentioned the Serafe licence, what used to be known as the Bilag licence. I think that's something that people pay without knowing exactly what it goes to funding. Can you say a few words about that?
Veronica DeVore
Sure. So it funds the Information Service of all five of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation units. So, that's the German-speaking, which is SRF, the French speaking, which is RTS, Italian, is RSI, and the Romansh is RTR, out of Chur. And all four of those units are mandated with informing the public over various channels on news, any issues of significance within the country, weather Service, all of these things important to sort of daily life and information needs. There's also local coverage within that. And they have an extensive network of correspondents and people reporting throughout Switzerland, to contribute to that offering. And then as I said, swissinfo is also partially funded by the licence fee and then partially, directly by government mandate. And so but we're also part of that network. And we are the international service of the Swiss broadcaster. So, that's the bulk of what it funds but some of the funding from Serage money also goes to private media. It's not just the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. And that's in the interest of upholding the diversity of the Swiss media landscape, ensuring that there is a diverse landscape, as we know, in many countries throughout the world, including Switzerland, there are much fewer media sources now than there were in the past. It's continues to be a struggling industry, to a large degree. So some of this funding also goes to private media, in the interest of that diversity and upholding and supporting the sector as a whole.
Daniel
And one of the big, long-running stories, if not the big, long-running story of the last few years was of course covid. Was there anything about that story and how it was reported here that you think might be particular to Switzerland?
Veronica DeVore
Yes, so this was probably the big, long-running story of our lifetimes, I would say, not just here, but in the whole world. But I think some particularities in Switzerland, one of them is that Switzerland has a direct democracy. And so, of course, the federal government needed special permission through a special COVID law, as we called it, to be able to take the measures that they needed to take in order to stem the pandemic, or address the pandemic. And, at some point that law was put to a vote through the direct democracy system. And that's quite unique to Switzerland I think, the ability to do that, and then, of course, the conversations, the political back and forth and controversy also around the law. And whether the government really had the mandate to do this. That conversation, I think was was quite unique here and also the fact that the law was voted on, I believe it was last November. So we will we're already quite, quite deep into the pandemic when the vote came, that's also down to the system that you know, first, the signatures have to be gathered and everything has to be rubber-stamped and the vote has to be prepared, so of course, it wasn't possible to vote on it kind of the day after it took effect. But in some ways that also gave it, gave it some time to show the effects and for people to weigh both sides of the issue. So that I think was was quite particular to Switzerland, the nature of how we weighed in on the measures being taken by the government. And then when it came to vaccines and whether people should get vaccinated and that discussion, of course, here like in many other countries, there were heated discussions about that. There was polarisation around that topic, a lot of controversy, a lot of personal struggles, I'm sure, in families and people at different sides of of the issue.
But Switzerland, interestingly, has quite a long history with vaccine scepticism, and this question of whether to vaccinate especially children. And even well before the pandemic, in 2019, a colleague of mine looked at this issue in depth for swissinfo. And she looked at sort of the various societal movements that led to vaccine scepticism in Switzerland. And she also talked to someone who's a professor who participated in a study, a big study, looking at vaccine-sceptical patients and doctors in Switzerland. And he pointed out that wealthy societies like Switzerland often have a higher level of scepticism in this regard, because there's a higher degree of personalised medicine. So, perhaps in less wealthy societies, where everyone just kind of gets the same standard of care whatever that may be in Switzerland, there's really this variation in personalised advice from different physicians, different-minded physicians, and that that phenomenon in Switzerland leads to, or has led to, historically, this higher degree of scepticism.
Daniel
And are there any tips that you would share with someone making the move to Switzerland now?
Veronica DeVore
Yeah, that's a great question. So, I think, Switzerland often is, is cast as a place where maybe integrating is a little bit difficult, or it can be, you know, somewhat daunting, I think, for people just moving to the country to find their way. And part of that, I think, is the close-knit communities that there are here, but also the linguistic communities, with the different German dialects, and it's, it's really challenging I think, to navigate all of that as a newcomer, but I would just encourage people to really have an open mind and be aware that, that there is a way forward, and that the Swiss, you know, are welcoming and that there is a place for everyone here. It's something that I experienced myself, you know, kind of straddling these two worlds, or these two backgrounds. And I found it really important these last 10 years to also try to bring people into the fold myself and work a little bit against the stereotype that Switzerland is unwelcoming or somehow especially hard to integrate into, because I think you kind of get out what you put into it. And at least that's what I've found. And I think, you know, if the willingness is there to really try to meet people and share your own experience and where you're coming from, there's a great deal of of openness and curiosity about other parts of the world, this cross cultural debate and for that, I think it's it's really a wonderful place, with people who come from everywhere.
Daniel
And if you can spare one newcomer the experience of having an angry neighbour shout at them about recycling, it will all have been worth it.
Veronica DeVore
I hope so! My main tip there is read your Abfall-Kalender in German, which is the trash or garbage calendar, which..
Daniel
You can subscribe to it.
Veronica DeVore
You can subscribe to it. I think there's even an app. There is a website and you get it sent home, so it's actually quite incredible, the whole thing, but you have to know about it first. So there's your tip.
Daniel
Veronica, I could talk to you all day. So thank you so much for joining us. This is really interesting.
Veronica DeVore
Thank you for having me. It's really been a pleasure.
Daniel
All right. And thank you too listeners for joining us. This is Daniel from Rigby, once again. We're a staffing an IT-services company based in Zurich. If you or anyone you know of is looking for a role in Zurich, or if you're looking to hire, let us know. We'd be happy to help. The best way to do that is by sending an email to contact@rigby.ch. So, until the next time!