When a journalist discovers himself in Hamburg he feels like a fashion designer in Paris, for Hamburg is one of the most important press cities in Europe. It is a home-town for Spiegel’s editorial, Gruner+Jahr Publishing headquarters which in 30 countries of the world publishes more than 500 magazines and newspapers such as Stern, Geo, National Geographic, NG Traveller, Elle and Cosmopolitan.
Before the financial crisis in 2009, the media market of Germany was seriously growing. But today, it’s online media that gains popularity. The hope that printing press can regain its former level, is fading.
Any self-respecting editorial develops the online version of it’s outlet, news feeds for mobile phones and tablet devices are developed, regarding the fact that in the near future these may be more profitable than the print version.
However, German online outlets encouraged the popularity increase of their print versions, the popularity they used to have before the digital era.
And untill now, it is more prestigious for a journalist in Germany to be a print press employee than that of an online outlet. At the same time, German editors believe that online press too should exercise high professionalism.
When a journalist discovers himself in Hamburg he feels like a fashion designer in Paris, for Hamburg is one of the most important press cities in Europe. It is a home-town for Spiegel’s editorial, Gruner+Jahr Publishing headquarters which in 30 countries of the world publishes more than 500 magazines and newspapers such as Stern, Geo, National Geographic, NG Traveller, Elle and Cosmopolitan.
Before the financial crisis in 2009, the media market of Germany was seriously growing. But today, it’s online media that gains popularity. The hope that printing press can regain its former level, is fading.
Any self-respecting editorial develops the online version of it’s outlet, news feeds for mobile phones and tablet devices are developed, regarding the fact that in the near future these may be more profitable than the print version.
However, German online outlets encouraged the popularity increase of their print versions, the popularity they used to have before the digital era.
And untill now, it is more prestigious for a journalist in Germany to be a print press employee than that of an online outlet. At the same time, German editors believe that online press too should exercise high professionalism.
“Journalism is not dying and it’s not in crisis. Publishing business is in crisis. Today, time and patience is needed to reconsider the content before posting it on the Internet,” warns Katya Gloger, editor and leading reporter of Stern, and adds:
“Keep away from Twitter!”
“The most important thing is to know how to present the story. I don’t think that online articles should be short: very often our detailed stories are read more than short news,” says Joachim Dreykluft, editor of the online version of Financial Times Deutchland.
Financial Times Deutchland is among the first online outlets. The web-page of the newspaper was created in 1999. “We developed it for a simple reason. to have a page on the Internet,” says Dreykluft. Five years ago, the editorial suffered serious changes. The site has its independent editorial staff, but two “ambassadors” from each department of the newspaper cooperate with the site.
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According to Dreykluft, website development requires big changes inside the company, and first of all, in the mentality of employees. “The online version is profitable, but it doesn’t cover expenditures of the print version. Our profit is advertisment, though, we move towards the paid content. Articles published today are free. The print version provides only 20% of the site content ,” he says.
Whereas editors of one of the most popular magazines of the world – Spiegel – believe that offering paid content on the Internet is stupid. “If you have an advertisment and a constant flow of visitors, why to lose them?”
The founder of Spiegel has always wanted to publish a daily outlet along with the magazine, but, unfortunately, he could never succeed. His dream partially came true when the website was created in 1996, though it gained popularity after the events of September 11, 2001.
“In the course of our history, we’ve often lost advertisers and money for being open and critical. The most important thing for us is our independence, and there is not a single organization or government that can affect us,” says the editor-in-chief of the magazine Georg Mascolo.
One of the independence secrets of our publication is the equal distribution of shares. 50% of shares belong to the Spiegel employees, 25% to Gruner+Jahr Publication (which is a part of the Bertelsmann Corp.) and 25% belong to the founder’s family.
Today, two leading outlets of German online press are Bild (tabloid) and Spiegel. 150 people all over the world work for Spiegel’s online edition. The result is obvious: the website has about 10 million unique visitors per day. A daily AD price is 60,000 EURO.
“Online AD market is growing, while there is no increase in print press. But I believe, it will not disappear as sooner as it is spoken about,” says Georg Mascolo.
Photos by Gayane Mirzoyan
Gayane Mirzoyan is a media expert of “Journalists for the Future” NGO who takes part in one-year-long “Journalism in Digital World” programme organized by the International Academy of Journalism.
Source: JNews.am