Publishing Houses and Publishers

Whither the German newspaper market? On what must newspapers rely in order to maintain themselves against the flood and acceleration of information on the Internet? And what is the true crisis lurking behind the current economic crisis? Answers to these questions from Ulrich Reitz, since 2005 editor in chief of the Essen Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), which, with a Saturday circulation of 580,00, the largest regional newspaper in Germany. Most recently Reitz has been talked about as the biggest re-modeller of the German newspaper business. He has developed a new concept for the four Ruhr area dailies belonging to the WAZ group with which he means to get higher quality at lower costs.

Mr Reitz, the media industry is caught up in a far-reaching process of change. The big papers are reducing costs and personnel. The phrase ‘newspaper crisis’ is on everybody’s lips. Could you describe what sort of crisis this is?

There’s been too much talk about the economic crisis for me. Let’s put that to one side; it’s boring, it’s been standing about everywhere and become stale. I find the rampant readers’ crisis more interesting. We’re in danger of going under in a flood of images. It all began with the invention of the TV zapper. This led to an acceleration of television consumption, to a permanent dissatisfaction, to the triumph of an action-charged viewing of surfaces. That has been continued in the Internet. Session length at a web site is three seconds. The Internet is a gigantic entertainment machine, a seducer in everything having to do with entertainment. Its victims are finally those who are banking on information: the newspapers.

How acute is this psychological strain at newspapers?

Acute. An example: I worked for eight years at a lossmaker, at Die Welt. One morning you come in and the porter says: ‘Good morning, Mr Reitz! Have you heard that the board of directors has decided to shut down Die Welt in three months?’. In the canteen my colleagues say: ‘Have you heard, Reitz, in two weeks they’re going to shut down Die Welt’. This shows what it means atmospherically to work at a lossmaker. The news that in 2008 the WAZ group was in the red for the first time in its history is therefore alarming.

As editor in chief of the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung you’re in charge of the re-organisation of the four Ruhr area dailies belonging to the WAZ group that will now be fitted out with a front section from a new central editorial department. This change will make 260 of 890 editor’s jobs redundant and save 30 million euros. Do you share the view that the diversity of the German press is in danger?

No, we have a an almost infinite diversity in the media. But the number of cities that can carry three newspaper is extraordinarily small. That wasn’t possible even in Dortmund, the biggest city in the Ruhr area, with 600,000 inhabitants. The Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung was the smallest of the three newspapers in Dortmund, after the Westfälische Rundschau, which belongs to the WAZ group, and the Ruhr-Nachrichten. The Dortmund local section alone – with a good dozen editors – generated million euro losses. When I began working here in 2005, I said I can’t take the responsibility for that.

Then you began re-structuring things.

Yes. The Dortmund WAZ took over the local section of the Westfälische Rundschau and retained four very good, very political editors and a photographer, who from then on delivered exclusive stories that were implanted in the local section, as in a building-block system. In this way, we created a completely new local section. People accused me of destroying diversity. But today we have a much greater diversity then ever – and the losses in Dortmund are history! This splendid Dortmund model is playing a big role in the present re-structuring. In our group it’s become a classic.

Your creed is that it’s possible to reduce costs and at the same time improve quality. In the industry you are therefore looked upon as a conjuror. Hardly anybody understands how that can work.

It’s not magic, it’s solid workmanship. A question of organisation. Whither the newspapers? Today you can get the mainstream news at every corner – and it also has to be in the papers. But in addition you need other elements that you don’t get in other media. That means you have to organise surprises. Anything else is merely interchangeable journalism. The concept means: re-thinking, commitment to passion and quality journalism. Period.

What is quality?

That’s easy to answer: Quality is the absence of knee-jerk answers. Another example: Before, the editorial conference used to take place at two o’clock in the afternoon. You might just as well have abolished the position of editor in chief; by two o’clock the section editors had long ago assigned the best pieces. Coaching, story management – you can forget all that in such a system. Since I’ve been here, the conference begins at eleven o’clock – and I mean a creative conference where you think about how the themes should be treated. That’s why a news desk with representatives of all editorial sections is such a boon, because creativity and quality are team achievements. And we’ve created an atmosphere here – Habermas would call it a domination-free discourse – in which everybody can express his opinion according to the motto: two heads are better than one. All this isn’t magic but workmanship; knowing how editorial staffs should be sensibly organised. And of course also some experience thrown in.

You’ve maximised freedom.

Right. Our editors have an extraordinary freedom, including in commentary. For example, as far as the current economic crisis is concerned, and how the government is Berlin is responding to it, I’m sitting here quite alone out on a limb. I find that exciting. And we’ll publish any well-argued opinion in our paper!

You spoke before of a ‘readers crisis’.

Behind it lurks a cultural crisis: people are losing touch with the printed word.

What can newspapers do against that?

Quite a lot. They have to go on constantly developing. A newspaper is never done.

How do you motivate young people to grab a newspaper?

Whenever I can, I go to schools. Headmasters invite me. I tell them: Assemble the sixth form and fill the school hall. And then I ask the sixth-formers: Do you want a career? Yes. Do you want a good-looking motor? Yes. How about a BMW convertible? Yes! And then I say: Unless you read, no BMW convertible. Then we take time for a discussion and it really rumbles. I like it when it rumbles.

The sixth-formers surely say: But we do read – in the Internet!

Then I ask: Really, is that so? You read texts with concentration for one and a half hours? Why then is the Schüler-VZ such a success? That’s not you then? Why are image-based, video-based portals such a success? Not you again? No, it is you who are making them such a success! Please don’t tell me that you read, because you don’t. Good, I know of course that’s not enough. The WAZ group is also thinking about whether we can appeal to new readers through new print products. We work up dummies and give them to market research. But I see how difficult young readers are. If you ask teachers today what children’s biggest problem is, they will tell you it’s that the kids can’t concentrate. The zapping generation – they can no longer sit down for a hour with a philosophical or historical text and come to grips with it. This is the trend that we’re facing. We have to counter this dramatic acceleration with something deep: we still think too little about the reader. We should cultivate much more the small forms. Many editors find news columns annoying. Before, when the news was still glued to layouts, the editor’s most important tool was the scissors. You subscribed to agencies, cut out excerpts and glued them together. Then a wondrous revolution occurred at Die Welt: the news was dictated orally. With a single stroke, news agency-talk no longer played a role. No more empty phrases; instead precision and concision. What Die Welt introduced twenty years ago needn’t be outdated today.

You’re returning to the classical journalistic virtues?

I could envisage the WAZ re-introducing the good old virtues of news dictation – so as to spare the reader’s time. So as to formulate the news more individually, more condensed. We also give up too easily. We say: economics – men’s stuff. Sports – men’s stuff. Yet we know that newspapers have to become more feminine. And only story-telling can do that. In the economics section of the WAZ Saturday edition, we tell stories – for example, about the economy of shepherds and sheep herding – and get a resounding echo, particularly from women. That takes economics down from its pedestal. That shows the human angle, and is an organised surprise. The magic of newspapers lies not only in the news, but also in the surprises. We have to strike the balance between giving people what they have subscribed for and also what they haven’t subscribed for. If we can do that, we have a future.