L'Hebdo's Blog & Breakfast

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Blog&Breakfast is an initiative by Swiss weekly paper, L'Hebdo, to track the campaigns of candidates in the country's upcoming parliamentary elections.

The blog can also be viewed in Google Maps, to show where candidates are at any given point.

Or, the blog can also be viewed in Google Earth, allowing users to get a sense of the country's landscape even as they virtually trail the candidates.

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They are part-time mandates carried out alongside a person's regular employment. Some expenses are covered, and a basic salary is paid, but politics is still very much a question of personal motivation and conviction, of public service, and of juggling professional and political commitments. Odd as this may sound to an American ear, Swiss politics is characterized by the normalcy of (most) politicians.

So, mid-May, off went the reporters, working on a weekly rotation. Every day they post several stories and pictures; a video in which the candidate they "shadowed" that day expresses one idea in one minute; and a photo of the guest room or the couch where they stayed the previous night. They tell of tagging along with the candidates at meetings with party members, about discussions with designers on campaign logos, or what it's like being at the office to check the day's work. They describe having dinner with families, driving up mountain valleys to participate in local events (and getting to shake hands), or chasing SUVs with young urban environmental activists. It's sociopolitical reportage in the purest form.

Of course, when asked to participate, some candidates say no. But as Blog & Breakfast has become more well known and election day nears, others are calling up offering hospitality.

Not Just Voyeurism

Blog & Breakfast "is as much a collective portrait of the Swiss political personnel as it is a journey into the political process," says Alain Jeannet, L'Hebdo's editor-in-chief. In other words, what do politics mean today in a country of advanced direct democracy such as Switzerland? How does it work? What's the life of an idea? What motivates people to run for (unpaid) office? How does a novice candidate negotiate the smooth party platforms?

The mandate of the reporters/bloggers is not to find flaws in the politicians' position papers, nor to immediately seek the reaction of the other political side: It's to observe, listen, and describe. Despite the proximity, they respect the candidates' privacy, except when private stories are relevant to the campaign coverage. "It's clear for us that sleeping at the candidates' is not voyeurism; it's a way to open a different discussion space," says Plattner.

On the trail, ideas emerge, such as the controversial concept voiced by a young candidate from Zurich of giving citizens voting rights at birth, with parents voting on behalf of the child up to a certain age. This provides a way, argued the candidate, of giving more weight to young families in an aging society. Great personal stories are told. Anecdotes are plentiful. Misunderstandings, too: When a female reporter asked a Swiss-German candidate for hospitality, he appeared confused and replied "but…I'm married!"

The New Journalism?

The ability to read the blog within online maps and aerial pictures offers an additional layer of information, pinning people to places and visually expressing the country's geographical diversity. Plattner believes in the near future all news will be geo-tagged, carrying not only the location and date, but the hour the story broke or was filed, and the corresponding GPS coordinates. "It's a way to improve transparency and make the personalization of news easier," he says.

For now, his and his colleagues' efforts are providing an unusual, highly original, and insightful portrait of both the noble and the prosaic aspects of contemporary Swiss politics. The experience is also turning into a living lab for a magazine that, like every other print publication, is searching for its online future, and for a newsroom where many journalists are still anxious about the new tools. "With a little training, everybody mastered the wireless, the blogging, and the video," says Plattner.

And mostly, they found the guest rooms austere, but clean and comfortable.

Like Swiss politics.

Bruno Giussani is a Swiss writer, tech entrepreneur, conference host and the author of "Roam: Making Sense of the Wireless Internet." He blogs at http://www.LunchOverIP.com. For BusinessWeek.com Giussani writes the monthly EuroScan column, discussing innovation in Europe.