Berliner Zeitung
Encyclopedia
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, published by Berliner Verlag. It is the only East German paper to achieve national prominence since unification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
. In 2003, the Berliner was Berlin's largest subscription newspaper—the weekend edition sells approximately 207,800 copies, with a readership of 468,000. The current editor-in-chief is Uwe Vorkötter.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
, the paper was bought by Gruner + Jahr
Gruner + Jahr
Gruner + Jahr GmbH & Co. KG is the largest European printing and publishing firm. Its headquarters is in Hamburg, Germany.-History:Originally founded on August 1, 1948 as the Henri Nannen publishing house, Gruner + Jahr was created in 1965 from a merger by acquisition, by publishers John Jahr Sr....
and the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
publisher Robert Maxwell
Robert Maxwell
Ian Robert Maxwell MC was a Czechoslovakian-born British media proprietor and former Member of Parliament , who rose from poverty to build an extensive publishing empire...
. Gruner + Jahr later became sole owners and relaunched it in 1997 with a completely new design. A stated goal was to turn the Berliner Zeitung into "Germany's Washington Post". The daily says its journalists come "from east and west", and it styles itself as a "young, modern and dynamic" paper for the whole of Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Gruner + Jahr decided to leave the newspaper business and sold the Berliner Zeitung in 2002 to the publishing group Holtzbrinck. This sale was forbidden by the German authorities since Holtzbrinck already owned another major Berlin newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel
Der Tagesspiegel
Der Tagesspiegel is a classical liberal German daily newspaper...
. The Berliner Zeitung was then sold in the fall of 2005 for an estimated 150 – 180 million euros to the British company Mecom Group
Mecom Group
Mecom Group plc is a newspaper publishing company headquartered in London, United Kingdom.It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index until 22 December 2008, when it became one of three media companies to fall out of the index.-History:The company was...
and the American company Veronis Suhler Stevenson
Veronis Suhler Stevenson
Veronis Suhler Stevenson, or VSS is a private equity firm whose investments are exclusively concentrated in the Media industry and related sectors including information, education, marketing services and business services...
. The employees criticized this sale vehemently, fearing that journalistic quality could suffer as a result of excessive profit expectations by Mecom boss David Montgomery
David Montgomery (newspaper executive)
David Montgomery is a British newspaper editor, executive, proprietor and media investor....
.
The Berliner Zeitung is the first German newspaper to fall under the control of foreign investors. Andrew Marr
Andrew Marr
Andrew William Stevenson Marr is a Scottish journalist and political commentator. He edited The Independent for two years until May 1998, and was political editor of BBC News from 2000 until 2005....
, former editor of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, which like the Berliner Zeitung was taken over by David Montgomery, said of the Berliner Zeitung that "[a]nyone who was working at The Independent in the mid to late Nineties will find all this wearisomely familiar. David's obsession at that time was removing as much traditional reporting as possible from the paper and turning it into a tabloid-style scandal sheet
Scandal Sheet
Scandal Sheet is a black-and-white film noir directed by Phil Karlson. The film is based on the novel The Dark Page by Samuel Fuller, who himself was a newspaper reporter before his career in film...
for yuppies."
On March 23, 2009, it was announced that the Berliner Verlag would be sold by Mecom to the publisher M. DuMont Schauberg (MDS) in Cologne. The price is about 152 million Euro. Mecom was forced to sell its publishing interests in Germany as well as Norway because of heavy debts.
List of editors-in-chief
.jpg)
- May – July 1945: Alexander Kirsanow
- July 1945 – 1949: Rudolf HerrnstadtRudolf HerrnstadtRudolf Herrnstadt was a German journalist and communist politicianmost notable for his anti-fascist activity as an exile from the Nazi German regime in the Soviet Union during the war and as a journalist in East Germany until his death, where he and Wilhelm Zaisser represented the anti-Ulbricht...
- 1962–1965: Joachim Herrmann
- 1972–1989: Dieter Kerschek
- 1989–1996: Hans Eggert
- 1996–1998: Michael Maier
- 1999–2001: Martin E. Süskind
- 2002–2006: Uwe Vorkötter
- 2006-2009: Josef Depenbrock
- since 2009: Uwe Vorkötter