Media: Under pressure – TIME ONLINE

The “Mirror” editor in chief is down for the count, the bosses of “star” and “Focus” must, by all three had only started in 2013. What’s going on in the media industry?

26th August 2014 19:41 clock

Journals | © Marcus Brandt / dpa

The view in a crowded train station kiosk can one always amazed at how many magazine buyer at all the reports on the disappearance of the genus print media then still has to give. But there are in Germany only three major weekly magazines, which probably really knows each: Focus Mirror and Star . They belong to the print products, which other journalists dare to put issues of general interest and prepare. And there are those who look at the other journalists when they ask themselves, how are the magazine industry.

All three are in these days become comparable reason itself to the message subject. The chief editor of the mirror is apparently down for the count, the editors of Star and Focus were exchanged respectively. Wolfgang Buchner, Dominik Wichmann and Jörg Quoos, all three of them had accepted responsibility only in 2013. What’s going on

First of all the individual cases have little to do with each other – the organization of the employee-dominated Mirror is a very different than those of the publisher-run Star . Share The industry problems, however all three

To summarize it briefly. Funding of media has become much more complicated, since media content to more diverse distribution channels than before, and partly free reach their audience. The competition for the attention of readers has increased, the advertising business no longer runs nearly as well as when large companies to advertise in print media were not around. And there is no more media title that you should not have missed, just as you earlier Wetten, dass ..? was not allowed to have missed, if you wanted to have a say in the office Monday morning. The campfire-TV no longer works as good as before. And also for campfire print media it is obviously more difficult.

In this time of uncertainty, in which the journalistic tools will not fit in a tool box, but only in a hardware store, Editors have, among other three tasks : to convince readers that they go to the kiosk not just once, but every week. The editors, all of whom are unfortunately media experts, to verify that the chosen path is the right one. And the publisher as soon as possible to satisfy with attractive numbers

The way the public broadcasters

Actually knows every single journalist in this country a solution to the problem -. Knows only every journalist a gradually other. What is missing is the big idea, with the proven everything will be fine. If there were, publishers would not believe in individual managers. Editors would implement generally accepted master plans and

drink in the evening satisfied Cognac, as when Rudolf Augstein still sat topics without Facebook. And readers would do what their job is: Buy journalistic quality products and not constantly unfaithful. With mobile games. Books. The Pharmacy Umschau .

Faced with the reality of the many approaches but hit media companies the way the public broadcasters one. Are criticized for years for being fixated on the rate, although it does not need to be. The rate is an instrument of the advertising industry, not quality control, and in the public broadcasters are only available in small time windows advertising. So you could rely on their own judgment and show programs they deem according to journalistic, journalistic or aesthetic criteria for good and relevant. You could Mad Men produce or Schlag den Raab . But they produce the Bergdoktor and ranking shows – because they thus reach more audience than with challenging mini-series by Dominik Graf, it even times out there that are still relegated to late program before they are finished.

What does not consider the transmitter, is the long-term effect. The expectations of the program and the desire to turn to sink. The trust disappears. Whoever relies on the largest audience,

reaches the really big audience only in exceptional cases. Cancer? Naked woman!

Print media follow a quota principle that now applies not only for Focus Mirror and Star . Paid circulation is one of the currencies in which quality is measured, because there is no purely journalistic currency. And that has similar consequences as the public broadcasters. The rapid success rate is overvalued, the longer-term development of our own identity is underestimated. Why else would a magazine shows a naked woman on the cover when it comes to cancer? This is the hybrid of Playboy and afternoon program of MDR – surface, coupled with compromise. And if the numbers do not agree then, trying rather quickly something else, anything. Spiegel Online is an example of how your own idea and staying power in their implementation can not hurt. In the nineties, when hardly invested a German publisher in online journalism, has been Spiegel Online large – and has remained so since then

Because yes, as already mentioned, every single journalist in. this country knows the solution to all problems, I will maybe my betrayed – which is namely the really best. I have been working for five months for ZEIT ONLINE, an online medium so, and online media coverage orientation is not entirely foreign to. I have since learned, first, what it means, that the success of each individual contribution can be measured; that you know exactly how many people click on a text. There is a psychology of the odd. It easily falls into temptation, heading to taper slightly stronger than necessary, which brings clicks, you can easily sell as quality

But, secondly. Could there be pretty sure that a contribution you find yourself really absolutely succeeded, the one further recommends itself, the friends they send with the message that reading is worthwhile – that such a contribution on average takes many readers. Always. It then seem to remember it when they read good writing.