journalism Archives - Page 11 of 12

Always On Time

Since 26 December 1952, Germany’s main evening news, the Tagesschau, has run on ARD. For decades its place has been fixed at exactly 8 p.m., opened by a gong. In 2020 and 2021, more than 11.6 million people watched it on average.

At its 60th anniversary in 2012, Georg Mascolo, then editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel, described it this way: Immer pünktlich, immer zuverlässig, fast immer fehlerfrei und ein kleines bisschen humorlos. Always on time, always reliable, almost always without errors, and a tiny bit humorless. He called it the Glockenschlag der Republik, the stroke of the bell of the republic.

The Black Book of public waste

Every autumn since 1973, the Bund der Steuerzahler, the Taxpayers’ Association, has published its Schwarzbuch, its black book of public waste. The 2026/27 edition lists 100 cases. The city of Stuttgart put up sails and parasols for 350,000 euros, some of them under a huge plane tree.

The town of Hadamar in Hesse built a toilet block on a fairground for 355,700 euros. In Schleswig-Holstein, 6.7 million euros of public money went into technology that is not used.

The Relotius Case

The statute of Der Spiegel says that every fact in the magazine must be correct: müssen unbedingt zutreffen. Its documentation department, with more than 80 staff, is considered the largest of any news magazine in the world. On 19 December 2018 Der Spiegel made public that Claas Relotius, one of its most prominent writers, had invented large parts of his reports.

His colleague Juan Moreno had noticed contradictions, checked the facts and reported his suspicion to the heads of the section. They reacted with skepticism. Der Spiegel called the case a low point in its 70-year history, and a commission examined why its checking systems had failed.

The Press Must Correct Itself

Section 3 of the German Press Code says that a publication must correct a report that later proves false. It must do so unverzüglich von sich aus, without delay and on its own initiative. The guideline adds that readers must be able to see that the earlier report was wrong.

The executive summary

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.

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.