Süddeutsche Zeitung

The Süddeutsche Zeitung ([ˈzyːtˌdɔʏtʃə ˈtsaɪtʊŋ]; German for South German Newspaper), published in Munich, Bavaria,[5] is one of the largest daily newspapers in Germany.

Süddeutsche Zeitung
The 20 May 2009 front page of Süddeutsche Zeitung
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatNordisch
Owner(s)Südwestdeutsche Medien Holding
EditorKurt Kister
Founded6 October 1945 (1945-10-06)
Political alignmentProgressive liberalism,[1] Centre-left[2][3]
HeadquartersMunich, Germany
Circulation345,156 (Print, 2018)
46,500 (Digital, 2018)[4]
ISSN0174-4917
Websitewww.sueddeutsche.de

History

On 6 October 1945,[6][7] five months after the end of World War II in Germany, the SZ was the first newspaper to receive a license from the US military administration of Bavaria. The first issue was published the same evening, allegedly printed from the same (repurposed) presses that had printed Mein Kampf.[8] The first article begins with:

For the first time since the collapse of the brown rule of terror, a newspaper run by Germans is published in Munich. It is limited by the political necessities of our days, but it is not bound by censorship, nor gagged by constraints of conscience.

The front page of the first issue can be read here (PDF).

Declines in ad sales in the early 2000s was so severe that the paper was to the brink of bankruptcy in October 2002. The Süddeutsche survived through a 150 million euro investment by a new shareholder, a regional newspaper chain called Südwestdeutsche Medien. Over a period of three years, the newspaper underwent a reduction in its staff, from 425, to 307, the closing of a regional edition in Düsseldorf, and the scrapping of a section devoted to news from Berlin.[9]

In spring 2004, SZ launched the Süddeutsche Bibliothek. Each week, one of 50 famous novels of the 20th century was made available in hardcover at certain newsstands and in book shops. Later a series of 50 influential movies on DVD followed. In late 2004 the daily also launched a popular science magazine, SZ Wissen.[10] In late 2005 a series of children's books continued this branch of special editions.

In early 2015, the newspaper received a 2.6-terabyte data set from an anonymous source. The dataset contained confidential information of a law firm offering the management of offshore companies. The newspaper in conjunction with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reviewed the data from the Panama Papers for over a year before publishing stories from it on 3 April 2016.[11]

In the late 2017, the newspaper released snippets from a 1.4-terabyte data set to be known as the Paradise Papers containing about 13.4 million documents, throwing light on the financial offshore jurisdictions, whose workings are unveiled, including Bermuda, the HQ of the main company involved, Appleby, corporate services provider Estera, corporate registries in Caribbean and Singapore-based international trust and corporate services provider, Asiaciti Trust. It contains the names of more than 120,000 people and companies.[12] The newspaper called in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to oversee the investigation. BBC Panorama and The Guardian are among the nearly 100 media groups investigating the papers. The leaked data covers seven decades, from 1950 to 2016.[13]

Profile

The paper, often abbreviated SZ, is read throughout Germany by 1.1 million readers daily and boasts a relatively high circulation abroad. The editorial stance of the newspaper is liberal and generally of centre-left,[2][3] leading some to joke that the SZ is the only opposition in the state of Bavaria, which has been governed by the conservative Christian Social Union of Bavaria almost continuously since 1949. In the 2013 elections the paper was among the supporters of the SPD.[14]

SZ is published in Nordisch format.[15]

Contents

Sections

The national edition features four sections: Politics, Culture, Economy and Sports. Editions sold in Munich and its surrounding counties include local news inserts.

The SZ is well known for its daily frontpage column Streiflicht (searchlight) of 72 lines, which is published anonymously.

Supplements

  • SZ Magazin (Friday), a magazine supplement
  • Wochenende (Saturday), featuring longer articles and short stories for the weekend.
  • TV listings (Tuesday) and an event guide (Thursday) are only included in the Bavarian edition.

Articles in English

Between 2004 and 2017, SZ published a weekly supplement containing articles in English from The New York Times.

Website

Süddeutsche.de (formerly sueddeutsche.de) is the newspaper's website. It contains articles from the paper's own online staff, articles that originally appeared in the print version of the paper and agency reports. The paper's first incarnation on the web was launched on the paper's 50th anniversary. It was called "SZonNet". The project was directed by Hella Schmitt of the SZ Text Archive (now DIZ - Documentation and Information Center Munich). Initially, it had no journalistic staff of its own, it simply used content from the print edition. Oliver Bantle, from SZ Science came up with ideas for publishing original science content online in 1996. The content went online in the fall of that year with Angelika Jung-Huettl as editor. Editorial responsibility lay with the then leader of SZ Science, Martin Urban. In the spring of 1998, travel-related content began to be published online. Wenke Hess originated the concept and implemented it as an editor.

Süddeutsche.de employs 25 journalists.

Circulation

During the third quarter of 1992 SZ had a circulation of 397,000 copies.[5] The 1993 circulation of the paper was 304,499 copies.[16] In the period of 1995-96 the paper had a circulation of 407,000 copies.[17]

Its 2001 circulation was 436,000 copies and it was one of the top 100 European newspapers.[15] In 2003 SZ had a circulation of 433,000 copies.[18] In the fourth quarter of 2004, the paper sold an average of 441,955 copies.[19] The circulation of the paper was 429,345 copies in the first quarter of 2006.[20] During the first quarter of 2012 it had a circulation of 432,000 copies.[6]

Notable writers

Some of Germany's best-known journalists either work for the SZ or spent considerable parts of their careers working for the paper. Heribert Prantl, head of the national desk, is a lawyer by education, a former public prosecutor, and the most cited author of editorial commentaries in German press. Hans Leyendecker is one of Germany's best known investigative journalists. Leyendecker formerly worked for the magazine Der Spiegel, unveiling various political and economic scandals, such as the widespread illegal party financing during the 1980s, and that of the CDU in 1999. He also unveiled the smuggling of Russian plutonium into Germany with the help of the foreign intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst in 1994, bribery at arms deals, the German Visa Affair 2005 and corruption of the staff council at Volkswagen. Another well-known journalist working for the SZ was Rudolph Chimelli, a political reporter who was working for the paper from 1 January 1957 to his death in 2016.

Martin Süßkind also worked with the SZ and eventually became the editor of the Berliner Zeitung. Giovanni di Lorenzo, who was responsible for the SZ's full page documentary Seite 3 (Page 3) from 1994 to 1998, and who was later editor-in-chief of the Tagesspiegel, also worked for the paper. He is now editor-in-chief of the weekly German newspaper Die Zeit.

The investigative reporters Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer in 2016 initiated and coordinated the worldwide Panama Papers revelations.

Controversy

In May 2018, the German Press Council opened an inquiry to determine whether a Süddeutsche Zeitung cartoon which depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was anti-Semitic; readers had complained that the image "reminded them of the anti-Semitic language of Nazi times." Süddeutsche Zeitung ended its decades-long collaboration with the cartoonist and apologized to readers, calling the cartoon a mistake.[21]

See also

References

  1. News Der Spiegel.
  2. "The Substance of What S&P Is Saying Is Quite Right". Spiegel Online. Retrieved 20 August 2012.
  3. Ruud Koopmans; Barbara Pfetsch (May 2007). "Towards a Europeanised Public Sphere? Comparing Political Actors and the Media in Germany" (PDF). Oslo: Centre for European Studies. Archived from the original (Report) on 19 December 2014. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  4. "Suddeutsche Zeitung media kit 2015" (PDF). October 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 August 2016. Retrieved 22 July 2016.
  5. Georg Hellack (1992). "Press, Radio and Television in the Federal Republic of Germany" (Report). Inter Nationes. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
  6. "Media Landscape Media Claims" (PDF). European Social Survey. May 2014. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 August 2014. Retrieved 12 January 2015.
  7. Sigurd Hess (2009). "German Intelligence Organizations and the Media". Journal of Intelligence History. 9 (1–2): 75–87. doi:10.1080/16161262.2009.10555166. S2CID 154195583.
  8. Zerofsky, Elisabeth (11 November 2017). "How a German Newspaper Became the Go-To Place for Leaks Like the Paradise Papers". The New Yorker. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
  9. Mark Landler (19 January 2004), MEDIA; Woes at Two Pillars of German Journalism New York Times.
  10. "New trend in Germany: scientific magazines by Die Zeit and Süddeutsche Zeitung". Editors Weblog. 3 December 2004. Retrieved 5 October 2013.
  11. "Panama Papers. The secrets of dirty money". April 2016. Retrieved 3 April 2016.
  12. "Paradise Papers: Your guide to four years of offshore revelations Archived 7 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine".
  13. "Paradise Papers: Everything you need to know about the leak Archived 9 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine".
  14. Juan P. Artero (February 2015). "Political Parallelism and Media Coalitions in Western Europe" (PDF). Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Archived from the original (Working paper) on 16 April 2015. Retrieved 8 April 2015.
  15. Adam Smith (15 November 2002). "Europe's Top Papers". www.campaignlive.co.uk. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  16. Peter Humphreys (1996). Mass Media and Media Policy in Western Europe. Manchester University Press. p. 82. ISBN 9780719031977. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
  17. Media Policy: Convergence, Concentration & Commerce. SAGE Publications. 24 September 1998. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-4462-6524-6. Retrieved 3 February 2014.
  18. "World Press Trends" (PDF). World Association of Newspapers. Paris. 2004. Retrieved 15 February 2015.
  19. "The New York Times of Munich – Portrait of the Süddeutsche Zeitung". Goethe-Institut. Archived from the original on 6 November 2013. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
  20. "European Publishing Monitor" (PDF). Turku School of Economics (Media Group). March 2007. Archived from the original (Report) on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 27 March 2015.
  21. Riham Alkousaa (May 18, 2018), German newspaper drops cartoonist after Netanyahu drawing Reuters.

Further reading

  • Merrill, John C. and Harold A. Fisher. The world's great dailies: profiles of fifty newspapers (1980) pp. 298–304
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