Newspapers and Magazines

"Die Welt" is one of Germany's oldest, national daily newspapers. With its online debut in 1995 "Die Welt" proved to be quite a pioneer, as it was one of the first national papers to go on the Internet.

It is actually a contradiction in terms – a profit-oriented publisher through and through who seems to enjoy running a chronically non-profitable daily newspaper. Where? - in Berlin. Name of the paper – "Die Welt", a newspaper published by Axel Springer PLC. The now 42-year-old musicologist Mathias Döpfner has been at the helm of Germany’s largest newspaper publishers since 2002.

The Corporate Group

The media groups staff of 10,700 produce more than 150 newspapers and magazines in 28 countries. In 2004 the Springer Group generated a turnover of 2.4 billion euros. The "Bild" newspaper has proved itself to be particularly lucrative – with its daily circulation of 3.8 million copies it has become Europe's biggest tabloid.

Döpfner's Re-launch

For Döpfner, being a journalist is the "greatest profession in the world". On 1^st July 1998 he was appointed editor-in-chief of "Die Welt". In the two years that were to follow he did his utmost to transform this fusty, old "gazette into a conservative-liberal daily with a new trendy image. Since then two of the 32 pages have been reserved for the comments section consisting of editorials, commentaries, columns, forums, portraits and a readers-write section. The reporting on news from the capital and on economic affairs was extended and improved. Foreign news coverage still centres on support for the right of the Israeli people to exist and on solidarity with the USA. With its online debut in 1995 "Die Welt" proved to be quite a pioneer, as it was one of the first national papers to go on the Internet.

The changes resulting from this were even noticed by competitors on the liberal-left in 1999. "No more venom, hardly any prejudices, no partiality", praised the "Süddeutsche Zeitung". "Die Welt" was even awarded the Media Oscar by the Society for News Design for its new, clearly defined and reader-friendly lay-out (7 columns, 27 spaces per line, many colour photos). In the year 2000 the SND, located not far from New York, voted the Berlin paper "The World's Best Designed Newspaper". At the end of 2001 the publishing house merged the editorial office of "Die Welt" with that of the regional paper - "Berliner Morgenpost".

Although he has been able to increase daily circulation a little – at the moment 236,000, there was one thing Döpfner did not manage to do – to get the "Welt" out of the red. The boss at Springer, who in a recent "Welt" editorial once again proclaimed his motto – "profit is almost everything", has to keep the flagship of the group above water by subsidising it every year to the tune of millions of euros – just as the founder of the publishing house, Axel Springer, did before him.

Axel Springer

According to "Spiegel" founder, Rudolf Augstein, the Hamburg publisher had the best nose in Germany for "sniffing out" ways to increase his circulation. In 1953 Springer acquired "Die Welt" – the daily newspaper that had been granted a licence by the British forces of occupation seven years earlier – for the sum of 2.7 million deutschmarks. The "Welt am Sonntag" paper and a yellow-press paper were also included in the price.

"In my opinion," explained Axel Springer in 1966, "newspapers should take part in politics, but they should not be politicians." He went on to say that the function of newspapers was chiefly to assist, to explain, to criticise and to stimulate. Here Springer was thinking of the political and economic values of the Adenauer era that brought about the German economic miracle. When he saw however that these values were being radically challenged by the protest movements of the late 1960's, the media mogul started to use the power of his press to defend what had been achieved – shouting it from the rooftops in "Bild", more subtly however in "Welt". It was due to this that Springer became "Public Enemy Number One" for the protest movement according to Hermann Glaser in his book "Kulturgeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland" (A Cultural History of the Federal Republic of Germany).

Targeting the Greens

The effects are still being felt today. If you open "Die Welt" now in the year 2005, you can be sure that on the political pages there will be one party that is scrutinised particularly thoroughly – "Bündnis 90/ Die Grünen" (The German Green Party) – the environmentally aware successor of the 60's protest movement and the APO- Außerparlamentarische Opposition (the extra-parliamentary opposition). According to "Welt" the Greens are a " strange party that won't make it into the history books" – even now 25 years after their founding. On the occasion of their anniversary Cora Stephan, the publicist from Frankfurt, even went so far in an article on the opinion page as to pose the question; "Is there anybody who still needs the Greens?"

In the past the paper – the only one since 1993 to have its headquarters in Berlin – would have left it at that. Today however under the new leadership of Döpfner's successor, Roger Köppel, the approach is little fairer. The former editor-in-chief at the Swiss "Weltwoche" had an almost full-page interview with Daniel Cohn-Bendit published – Cohn-Bendit is the Head of the Greens in the European Parliament. Its contents: magic moments, failures and the party's future prospects. Two days later in a reader's letter there was a quote from opposition politician Günther Beckstein of the CSU party: "We were wrong. The Greens are the only party in Germany that has been constantly able to reinvent itself – that's what I call an achievement."

Recommended Reading Lutz Hachmeister, Friedemann Siering : Die Herren Journalisten, Die Elite der deutschen Presse nach 1945 (Gentlemen Journalists, The German Press Elite after 1945 , 328 pages, Verlag C.H.Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-47597-3 (with some comprehensive chapters on Axel Springer, the "Mystic of Sylt")