One page at the front, written last, containing the conclusion and the recommended decision. It exists because the person who will act on the report may not read the rest of it, and the document is designed around that possibility rather than against it.
journalism
Greed is great
Greed is great — an advertising slogan run by the electronics chain Saturn from 2002, shortly after the discount laws were repealed. It became one of the most argued-about slogans in German advertising history, blamed in public debate for a coarsening of commercial culture. The company eventually dropped it.
A campaign celebrating the pursuit of low prices caused a national argument about what the country had become.
The trade press
Germany sustains an unusually dense Fachzeitschrift sector — periodicals for individual industries, trades and professional specialisms, many published for decades. The reader is assumed to want depth in one field rather than breadth across several.
Consumer Reports
The American product testing organisation, founded in 1936, takes no advertising and publishes ratings alongside price. Its signature judgment is the Best Buy — not the best product, but the best product at its price.
Consumer advice
American consumer journalism publishes guidance on how to haggle — what to say at a dealership, when to buy, what the dealer paid, what margin to aim for. The information asymmetry is treated as a problem to be solved rather than as the way things are.
Cause-research
Cause-research. German has a single ordinary word for the activity of investigating why something happened, and it appears in news reports as a matter of course. Die Ursachenforschung läuft — the investigation into causes is running.
There is no English equivalent that is not a phrase. Root cause analysis is consultant’s language. Ursachenforschung is what a newsreader says.
The testing foundation
Stiftung Warentest. A foundation established by the federal government in 1964 that tests consumer products and publishes comparative results with numerical grades. It takes no advertising. A poor grade is commercially serious, and a good one appears on packaging for years.
The advice column
The American newspaper advice column is a national institution — Dear Abby and Ann Landers were written by twin sisters and ran in thousands of papers for decades, and the genre continues across newspapers, podcasts and websites.
Every one of them works the same way. A person writes in describing their situation and asks. The advice is published only in answer to a request, and the request is printed first.
Too obtrusive?
In 2011 “Spiegel Online” published an article on how to write a job application for the American labor market. The beginning of the article points out differences between Germany and the US.
“Asking additional questions is not considered bothersome and the marital status should not be in your resume- if you apply at an American company it is easy to trip over cultural differences. Here is an overview over the most important concepts.”
After turning in your application, the article suggests: ”You should not expect that he or she will get back to you on his/her own.”
Conversely, asking additional questions is interpreted as annoying in Germany. The potential employer should get back to you on their own if they are interested. Asking further questions is considered as obtrusive in Germany.
BER
The Berlin-Brandenburg Airport is a topic surrounded by discord. There is no end in sight for this odyssey. The costs just continue to rise into incalculable sums. This caused the association of taxpayers to heavily criticize the politicians responsible for it in 2012.
The airport was a “manifest of poor planning, mismanagement, incomplete construction plans, and expenses beyond the budget“. The association of taxpayers blacklisted the overseeing committee of high-ranking representatives from Berlin and Brandenburg and the federal government, accusing them of “political failure” and “blind trust” in the underqualified management” of the airport.
Should one have checked the project’s progress more rigorously? Perhaps through frequent feedbback?