Our final full day in Berlin flashed by today, with a full-day session at Axel Springer, Europe’s largest publishing company. The company is headquartered here and has operations in 36 countries with more than 230 newspapers and magazines as well as 80 online offerings and television and radio holdings.
Rudolf Porsch, director of Axel Springer’s Akadamie (a two-year training program for young journalists), started by explaining that German journalists are different from Western journalists in that the relationships with politicians and governments isn’t that adversarial and while they strive to inform and please the public, operations are more commercially oriented.
But Axel Springer was a visionary whose family was in the newspaper business. He wanted to ensure good journalism for Germans after the devastation of World War II, and he set his headquarters right next to the Berlin Wall in West Berlin. Some thought he was crazy; they feared all of Germany would become communist. But he called his building the Lighthouse of Freedom and proved them all wrong. His influence and principles continue after his death. In fact those principle are written into each employee’s yearly contract he or she has to sign. And the building remains its bright yellow color.
The journalism training program began in 2007 and Rudolf says it’s the most progressive journalism school in Europe, complete with a partnership with Columbia University in New York. The company selects about 20 students twice a year for this program. They first spend time training and writing and then are placed throughout the company. If they finish (and yes, they get a salary) and stay, they must remain in the company for three years or repay for their schooling.
We met some of the students and they told us about their work. Most have some journalistic experience already. They range in age from 18 (yes, someone straight out of high school) to the early 30s. Delightful bunch! I’ll let the students tell more. One young woman is a Munich area native, and we hope to see her next week.
Martin Heller told us all about the company’s video department. He came over from broadcast television. His employees cover breaking news, work on licensing video content to TV stations, and work on some talk shows, live event streaming and more. A fun quote after he told us about being the “aliens” in the company: “No one understands what we do. We’re always asked ‘Why does it take so long?’ and ‘Why does it cost so much?’ ” His 40 employees include a large number of freelancers. His dream is to develop an online video platform like YouTube for Axel Springer.
The day there ended with a great presentation by Leeor Englaender, assistant to the Die Welt editor-in-chief. He’s overseeing the change from a print focused format to an online first production. Leeor sees this as a continuation of Axel Springer’s innovation and foresight, noting all the firsts the company is recognized for, as well as the fact that its properties control the largest share of Germany’s daily newspaper market: 23.6 percent.
The newsroom has totally changed with proprietary software that enables one process from writing to editing to online to publication. But the online product comes first now, and Leeor said it was the first Germany nationwide newspaper online and the first to create its own iPad app that’s not a pdf version. It also has a paywall similar to The New York Times. For 14 euros per month, readers have unlimited access, and it’s working, he said. And Axel Springer has Kompakt versions of Die Welt, its daily, and Sunday, among other papers. Same content but smaller size to please younger target audiences.
The students were impressed with the process and rightfully so. But one thing the professors heard clearly — the company could do this because 10 years ago the company slashed its editorial and other staff in half. Regional newspapers in Berlin and Hamburg combined operations and share content. Some of this would have happened anyway without the push for innovation — advertising has steadily 30 percent, just as in the U.S., particularly classified. But the downsizing and combination of efforts makes money available for all of this to occur.
But he noted in response to a student’s question that the company needs to keep the print product alive. It still pays the bills and covers expenses. And so does its tabloid, Bilt. That is still extremely popular (still naked women and sports, pleasing those who want that ….), and he was clear to note this is a totally separate operation. Both staffs are in the building we visited. But they don’t meet, don’t share content, don’t work together.
“We’re like Volkswagen. On one end of the plant it produces Volkswagens, [and] on the other end Porsches,” he said.
Just as we thought we ran out of topics, Alexa Blanchard raised her hand, God bless her, and said when she Googled his name, she found he was part of an exhibition called “Jew in the Box.” I had heard this on NPR early last month and brought a short clip to play for the class.
Yes, he was a participant, he told us, and that started with one of his Die Welt columns about this mother. He said being a Jew in Germany, which has about 200,000 Jews, about 1 percent of its population, means you can’t be incognito. “For me the box is a symbol,” he said. “You’re always like a piece in an exhibition.”
The participants take turns in the Jewish Museum answering questions from visitors. “It’s normal,” he said. “People always want to know about Jews and Jewish life.” He added that happens because “more than 99 percent of Germans have never met a Jew.”
Often hear hears complaints that too much time is spent on Jewish history and the horror of the World War II, although the city to me has done an excellent job with its memorials and museums and recognition of what happened 60 years ago. He also said that Axel Springer saw what happened to Jewish writers and authors and wanted to make it right. So a free and unified Germany, a friendship with Israel and the Jewish people, and a free social marketplace in a free and unified Europe were important to him and were part of his company’s principles.
As we collected our belongings, we had lost track of half of our group. They came back down amid some of the Akademie students. One of them had taken them up to the 19th floor to see the bar up there. They told me that’s where the euro was conceived and created. Amazing what you can learn about history, isn’t it, when you travel?
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