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Heribert Prantl

Are newspapers still relevant?


Journalism at the dawn of a new age

"Good journalism is good whether in print or online" writes the political editor of the
Süddeutsche Zeitung. It is not the Internet that is responsible for the "crisis of the
press", but subordination of journalism to the market. The increasing pressure to
make a profit means that, for the first time since 1945, German journalism risks
becoming trivialized.

Yes, newspapers are relevant −− and I can prove it. They are more relevant
than Hypo Real Estate, more relevant than Deutsche Bank or Dresdner Bank.
They are far more relevant than Opel or Arcandor. The Süddeutsche Zeitung is
relevant, the Frankfurter Allgemeine is relevant; Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Die
Welt, the Frankfurter Rundschau and the tageszeitung are all relevant. So are
many others. The system in which they are relevant is not called the market
economy, not the financial system or capitalism, but democracy. Democracy is
about a community shaping its future together. And the media, in all its forms
−− print, broadcast and digital −− is one of its most important creative forces.
The proof of the relevance of the press is 177 years old, begins in 1832 and
continues right up to the present day. It arises out of the entire history of
German democracy.

This history of German democracy begins in 1832 at the castle of Hambach, at


the first ever mass demonstration in Germany. Its chief organizer was our
journalistic forebear Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer, born in 1789, the year of
revolution. When the government sealed up its printing presses, he took it to
court on the grounds that the sealing of printing presses was as unconstitutional
as the sealing of baking ovens. This is a marvellous phrase, because it contains
within it the recognition that the freedom of the press is democracy's daily
bread. Press freedom is the daily bread of democracy: that is the message of
Hambach Castle in 1832.

Hambach was then, in the very first days of German democracy, the very earth
in which the trees of liberty were planted. Today these trees of liberty are
deeply rooted, they are fully grown and they are tended by the Federal
Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. Karlsruhe is something like the Hambach of
our age; and Karlsruhe has confirmed the constitutional relevance of the press
in major judgements, for instance in the Spiegel judgement of 1965,1 or the
Cicero judgement of 2007.2 "A free press that is not influenced by the public
use of force and is not subject to censorship is a fundamental component of a
free state." Furthermore, "the press is a body whose permanent function it is to
mediate between the people and its elected representatives in parliament and
government and to monitor them". That may not be as vividly expressed as at
Hambach Castle, but it means the same thing: freedom of the press is

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democracy's daily bread.

Public radio and


television, which are
"the press" in the legal
sense, also of course
provide this "daily
bread" −− and are well
rewarded for doing so.
The acknowledgement
of the constitutional
relevance of public
radio and television is
in the broadcasting
licence fees.
Compared to what
ARD, ZDF, Deutschlandfunk and co. put together have received in licence
fees, the stimulus package for the economy for the year 2008−9 is a mere
pittance, and the sums provided by the state for the Hypo Real Estate bank are
practically a personal loan. But in return for this money, public broadcasters
provide not only our daily bread, but all kinds of cakes and pastries too.

State−financed newspapers?

You probably think that my comments on the relevance of the print media
have been leading up to a plea for its financing or support by the state. Far
from it, in fact. I don't want to see any demonstration of goodwill for the press
or any state security, relief package or emergency money. The last thing
newspapers need is a situation similar to ZDF −− when political parties think
that they can not only choose the chief editor of the public news channel, but
also the editor of the tageszeitung.3 Above all, the reason why I don't want any
state loan, rescue package or emergency money for newspapers is that I just
don't see the desperate state of newspapers such as it is being universally
bemoaned. Rather I see a remarkable kind of journalistic decadence;
melancholy mixed with an easy−come, easy−go attitude, world−weariness and
supposed helplessness in the face of dwindling sponsorship and the Internet, in
the face of the current state of affairs and their apparently inexorable trend.
This alleged state of existential crisis, the very moribundity of newspapers or
even of professional journalism in general −− all this is a manifestation of the
kind of hysteria that thrives in journalism more than it does elsewhere. This
cock−a−doodle−doo journalism, this excitable squawking which has shaped
our political journalism for some time, is now squawking its own end into
being. We are writing our very own fin de siècle. We are running down our
own product, denigrating it until everyone believes it −− even intelligent
people like Jürgen Habermas and Dieter Grimm.

The philosopher Jürgen Habermas and the former federal constitutional judge
responsible for press freedom, Dieter Grimm, have argued for newspapers to
be funded by the state. They believed and believe in the existential crisis of
newspapers −− and their response is an almost desperate declaration of love.
We journalists for the most part dismissed this rather arrogantly, often because
it is easier to dismiss such an argument than to complain about the lack of
imagination on the part of one's own publishers and management, and to
denounce the unrealistic profit expectations of one's owners. Excessive profit
demands on the part of newspaper owners are an expression not of financial
need, but of short−sightedness and stupidity.

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After all, it is simply not the case that newspapers in Germany are in the red; it
is not as if they have been making a loss for years. They are just not making as
great a profit as they were. This happens in the very best businesses, including
those to which we have no fundamental right. Publishing companies use this
alleged state of emergency as a kind of exaggerated self−defence. Many of the
so−called reconstruction measures and the waves of redundancies in German
media houses are supposed self−defence mechanisms that have been taken to
extremes, which −− and this is the really tragic thing −− endanger the very
basis for the future prosperity of press enterprises.

German newspapers do not need any money from the state. But they do need
journalists and publishers to do their work properly. They need journalists of
integrity who are inquisitive, discerning, uncomfortable and self−critical. They
need owners who value such journalism −− who want more from their
newspapers than money, who are proud to be newspaper owners; and whose
pride means more to them than one or two per cent more profit.

The newspaper depression in the United States

Journalism in Germany has delighted in letting itself be swept up in the


American newspaper depression. We behave as if it is simply a given that the
"state of play" in the US matches the state of affairs in Germany. We see
newspapers supposedly dying out in America and simultaneously overlook the
fact that a remarkable 50 per cent of all adult Americans open a newspaper
daily. Be that as it may, the crisis in America does exist. Long before the
global financial crisis came to a head in the autumn of 2008, 19 of the 50
biggest US papers were in the red. If there is one branch of the economy in the
USA that is worse off today than the banks, it is daily newspapers. Stephan
Russ−Mohl, professor of journalism in Lugano, explains what media
enterprises have in common with the financial jugglers of Wall Street: "It
wasn't so long ago that the one branch of the economy that gave a better return
on investments [than banks and newspapers] was casinos."

Banks, newspapers, casinos. That should give us a clue as to what led to the
American newspaper depression: above all, greed. The American newspaper
industry has fallen victim to the Wall Street theory that dictates that the way to
maximize profit is to minimize your product.

Newspapers in the United States went to the stock market and, in return for
their efforts, were brought to the brink of financial ruin. Their value became
dependent not on their readers, but on their shareholders. Newspapers were
expected everywhere and at all times to improve their value on the stock
market. This is why such ruthless restructuring took place, why networks of
correspondents were cut, offices closed and editorial departments emasculated,
with printing costs reduced at the expense of content. Investment funds have
taken on a fundamental economic interest in more and more newspapers. No
one needs to point out that fund managers have no interest in the business of
producing a newspaper: but this has been, and remains, a cause of the dreadful
state of affairs in the US.

The other reason may have something to do with the fact that American papers
completely failed to perform their function in the Bush era. In Washington, in
the words of Pulitzer Prize−winner Russell Baker, "the capital's renowned
press corps were happy to be fobbed off with lies and to be made into the
auxiliary troops of a clique of neoconservative conspirators". As a result, blogs
became nothing other than a democratic necessity, to replace what was

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missing. In blogs you found the critical analysis and commentary opposing
Bush and the war in Iraq that you could not find in the newspapers. Good
journalists should not start wailing and gnashing their teeth at the thought of
the blogosphere. They should be grateful to bloggers for filling in, where
needed, the commentary that they fail to provide and exposing their own
mistakes.

There is much to be learned from the newspaper depression in America.


Especially, what needs to be done to avoid such a depression. Some things are
worth stating explicitly here: maybe, above all, that mawkishness needs to be
replaced by passion. Impassioned journalism would not accept the
manipulation of the press by the Deutsche Bahn so readily as has recently
happened.4 Instead, there would be an outcry. Perhaps the truth is that we are
embarrassed, firstly to have allowed ourselves to have been manipulated like
this, and secondly because these things were exposed not by the press, but by
the private organization "Lobby Control".

Blogs = more democracy

As far as blogs and the Internet are concerned, I do not understand why, as
print journalists, we should be afraid of the Huffington Post. It does the same
thing as a quality German newspaper does: "proper" journalism. We should
stop constructing artificial antitheses between newspapers and classical
journalism on the one hand, and blogs with their supposedly "unclassical"
journalism on the other. We should stop regarding blogs with financial envy.
There is much less money made in blogging, and with blogs, than with
newspapers. We should stop the vapid talk of how classical journalism is
disappearing into a "Bermuda Triangle". Good classical journalism is no
different from good online journalism. The baselines run right across all these
frameworks and clusters: there is good journalism and bad in all media. It's as
simple as that.

Good journalism has good, no, great times ahead. Journalists have never had a
bigger audience than in the aftermath of the digital revolution. Journalism was
never accessible across the world before as it is now. And there was probably
never so much demand for journalism that enlightens and classifies, which one
can rely upon and look to for orientation. But the fact remains that the
broadening of knowable knowledge via the web (the philosopher Martin Bauer
calls it the "horizontal" broadening of knowledge) is achieved at the cost of the
deepening of that knowledge (thus, in Bauer's terminology, its verticalization).
In brief: the quantity of data increases, but without being processed. This
presents journalists with a new task: the only remedy against data trash is
thoughtful reflection and background knowledge. Print journalism therefore
needs to react to the media revolution by inventing new "formats", with
journalists taking on the task of sorting the wheat from the chaff. The new
formats are where the web's mass of data is sorted and evaluated.

The amateur journalism thriving in the blogosphere is no reason for


professional grumbling. This amateur journalism affords opportunities for
fruitful collaboration. It represents a democratic profit. These bloggers remind
me of the revolutionary citizens of 1848−9, and the communications revolution
of today reminds me of the one of 150 years ago.

For the revolution of 1848−9 was also a communications revolution. The


number of daily newspapers in German practically doubled, from 940 in 1847
to 1700 two years later. In Paris the total circulation of all papers soared from

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50 000 before the revolution to 400 000 in May 1848, when 171 newspapers
could be counted in the French capital. One of the chief activities of the
incredible number of political organizations that were founded at the time was
to read aloud from newspapers and discuss the material together. The
explosive spread of the press, together with the new means of transportation
offered by the railways, gave rise to a new and greater sphere of experience. In
Germany, the intellectual idea of a shared German fatherland thus became a
tangible reality. In short: 1848, the year of revolutions, stands for a political
learning process that included hundreds of thousands of people and gave them
the opportunity to participate in the political process. 150 years later, the
digital revolution offers the same possibility once again, on an unheard−of
scale.

Put a different way: blogs are "more democracy", even with all the
imponderables they entail. Inherent in blogs is the opportunity for a new civil
revolution. Should professional journalism really turn up its nose at this, just as
the established princely rulers and monarchical potentates did 150 years ago?

Talk less, act more

Maybe in Germany we should stop talking about freedom of the press so much
and actually practise it instead. Too much incense, it is said, spoils the saint.
And what is true of saints could also be applied to fundamental rights: amid
their ritual exaltation they become scarcely recognizable and lose their identity.
Be that as it may, the law views freedom of the press as a basic right worth
making a fuss about. It is almost like one of those pieces of glittering tinsel that
we put up on special days such as the anniversary of the federal constitution −−
just as a German family does with the Christmas decorations on 24 December.
After the festive season, we put all the stuff away.

In the day−to−day legislative routine, the freedom of the press plays no role at
all: take the BKA law,5 the mass storing of private data, the laws on
telecommunications surveillance. Journalists' telephones are bugged, phone
numbers are stored, journalists' computers can be searched −− as if there were
no such thing as the protection of confidentiality and no such thing as press
secrecy. What is the use of the right of a witness to refuse evidence, as
guaranteed in the code of criminal procedure, or journalists' right to the
confidentiality of sources, if the state can find all that out by searching through
computers or recording phone conversations without court authorization?

As has sadly been the case for some time, press freedom is compelled to stand
aside when the state comes along with its blue light flashing, in other words by
claiming that security interests are at stake. Lawmakers have become
accustomed to having little regard for press freedom. I wonder myself whether
journalism has not itself got used to having a low opinion of itself. Does the
press pose a greater danger to press freedom than the legislature? I believe so.
The truly great danger for journalism in this country comes from within, from
the media themselves −− from a journalism that despises journalism, from
owners and publishers who bring journalism to its knees through economizing
measures, real or pretended, and from media entrepreneurs who lay journalism
upon the altar of the commercial and advertising market.

Perhaps it is my origins in Regensburg that at this point bring to my mind


something that the late Prince of Thurn und Taxis once said. Speaking of the
princely fortune, he described it as something so vast that it could never be
drunk, eaten or whored away −− all one could do was stultify it. Sometimes I

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get the feeling that this is also true for the intellectual and economic assets of
the big German newspapers.

The journalism of the future

What will journalism look like in the future? Anyone who wants to talk about
the future has to know about the past. I began by mentioning our ancestor
Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer, because he stands at the beginning of a line of
great journalists. The Siebenpfeiffers of the Weimar Republic were called Kurt
Tucholsky and Carl von Ossietzsky, in the Federal Republic they were called
Henri Nannen and Rudolf Augstein, and even Axel Springer. Even with all
their differences and contrasts, they were aware that journalism has a task that
goes beyond making money.

I often speak of these great names of journalism, because they stand not only
for journalism's past, but also its future. It is important that our young
colleagues in schools of journalism not only learn how "crossover journalism"
works, that they not only learn how to write, and produce, quickly and
effectively, but also that they learn to appreciate that there are journalistic
exemplars to emulate, great ones at that −− why they are great, and how they
became so. Why? Not only because they were wonderful journalistic craftsmen
and intelligent and astute publishers, but because they had a certain attitude.

Attitude: the word has gone out of fashion. It means standing up for what you
believe in, not bending in the face of short−lived trends, of unrealistic profit
expectations, or balance sheets. I am convinced that if the journalistic side of a
newspaper or a media enterprise is healthy, then in the long term the economic
side will be healthy too. Today, an appropriate journalistic attitude includes
considering, in cooperation with others, how "creative" savings can be made.
In other words, we have to be clear about what the press needs in order to
defend its freedom from the cuts being made in the news and media markets.

Perhaps we should talk less about press freedom and practise it more. That
goes for publishers and editors. I mention both explicitly. Both publishers and
editors must show in their work −− and not in cheap petitions made to
legislators −− what freedom of the press is and what it means to them. What is
worse than raids on Cicero offices, worse than the stockpiling of data and
police searches of online material, are mental straitjackets self−imposed by
journalists, and the self−emasculating measures being carried out by publishers
in editorial offices. Press freedom is not the freedom to squeeze editorial
offices dry. Nor is it the freedom to replace oneself by part−time offices, as if
it were a case of keeping a call centre operational for a while. Press freedom is
not the freedom of corporate raiders, but rather the freedom of responsible
journalists and publishers. These asset−strippers devour everything, even
freedom of the press. Sometimes they even disguise themselves as benevolent
philanthropists. The work of journalists cannot simply be farmed out to PR
offices, lobby−financed advertising agencies and freelance writing services.
Yet that is exactly what is happening. We are facing the acute danger, for the
first time since 1945, of German journalism becoming trivialized and reduced
to the lowest common denominator because of the increasing pressure to make
a profit; and because informed, capable journalists not in the pocket of private
interests are increasingly being replaced by multimedia production assistants,
razor−sharp jacks−of−all−trade and masters of none. The profession known
today as journalist will then become a multi−functional filler of newspapers
and websites. Such filling skill is not exactly the democratic cultural institution
which the fundamental right of the freedom of the press was established to

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protect.

Freedom is something guaranteed the press −− that is to say, journalists,


publishers, media enterprises. Press freedom could cease to apply if this
privilege is misunderstood as freedom without responsibility −− and if media
enterprises see themselves merely as profit−making concerns like any other.
Managers are mistaken if they believe that the manufacture of print
publications is no different from the manufacture of clingfilm. There is no
fundamental right set down in law for manufacturers of clingfilm. There is a
reason, however, for the press's fundamental right to freedom: it is the
precondition for a functioning democracy. If this basic principle is not
respected any more, this fundamental right loses its raison d'être. And in that
event, newspapers really will be robbed of a future. More and more people are
already busy writing the newspaper's obituary: "Born 1603 in Strasbourg,
Alsace, died 2020. We shall honour the newspaper with a fitting memorial."
These funeral orators are not talking about the merging of editorial offices, nor
about editors who have lost their jobs, nor of outsourcing −− rather it is the
Internet they are thinking of. Ever since the American journalist Philip Meyer
published a book in 2004 called The Vanishing Newspaper, panel discussions
about the Internet at media conferences have sounded like preparations for the
funeral of the newspaper.

For a start, such thoughts are a little premature, given that Professor Meyer
only forecast the year 2043 for the death of the daily newspaper. Secondly,
Meyer's prophecies could end up like those of his colleague Francis Fukuyama,
who proclaimed the "End of History" in 1992, after the collapse of the Eastern
Bloc and the communist states. History then refused to obey.

But this desire to accelerate the death of the newspaper, the mortality
diagnosed by Meyer, does indeed exist. Recently in Germany it was David
Montgomery who sought to drive journalism out of the Berliner Zeitung and
make the paper into a kind of user interface featuring less and less of anything
that costs money (i.e. good articles) and more and more of what brings money
in (i.e. advertising and product placement). As I have discussed, this is a
pattern we are already familiar with from the USA, where journalists are made
redundant, correspondent numbers are reduced, editorial offices broken up and
articles written in−house replaced by agency−written pieces or bought in on
the cheap. The editor−in−chief becomes a head of management; intellect is
replaced by inanity; and savings are made until readers leave. It is like a
twisted version of the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale; gold, out of greed and folly, is
spun into straw. In the case of the Berliner Zeitung, we may hope that the
paper has now taken a turn for the better. But I worry that though Montgomery
may now be gone, his example has become the accepted thing.6

Only reflection and background education can help us to combat


"data trash"

This is not what a successful future for the newspaper would look like. The
daily paper must change itself, and it will −− far more than competition from
radio and television have changed it. The contents of newspapers will be
different from what we have grown accustomed to, but it will remain
newspaper journalism, very much so. The texts will have to be news in the
original sense −− texts around which we can orient ourselves. There will also
have to be texts and formats which sort, order and evaluate the mass of
information in the Internet. This will come at a cost. But I believe that many
newspaper readers will be willing to make a contribution, and that there will be

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users who will be drawn to newspapers for this very reason.

As I have stated, only reflection and background knowledge can help us to


combat "data trash". This is what newspapers must provide. But this cannot be
achieved with the kind of journalism that is gradually dumbing itself down.
Journalism done on the cheap is destined for the trash, not to be read. If a
newspaper bases itself around advertisements, it becomes no longer a
newspaper at all, but a freesheet, which does not even have enough adverts to
finance itself any more.

If journalism is not to become a cheapened caricature of itself, what cannot be


allowed to continue much longer is newspapers giving away their most
important articles on the Internet for free. That is, quite literally, a form of
self−betrayal. A very rapid change of course will have to take place, towards a
very simple, straightforward and workable system of
micro−payment−per−article. Then you would get the appetizer for free, while
the main course would cost a few pence. Click and buy: it doesn't kill anyone,
but it does make newspapers stronger.

Having said that, I would have no objection to endowment foundations, which


are currently experiencing a welcome upturn, offering newspapers a helping
hand: they could certainly do with a little patronage. Sponsorship of a
newspaper endowment is truly sponsorship of public welfare. The FAZ
endowment model (for decades, the financial and editorial independence of the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has been supported by the FAZIT Foundation)
ought to be able to entice people to emulate it. There is after all no shortage of
intelligent and responsible multi−millionaires in Germany.

The Internet, the Internet! Many newspaper people talk about it as though it
were a new invasion of the Huns. The Huns came from nowhere 1500 years
ago and reduced everything to rubble (and then vanished again 100 years
later). The Internet is not reducing anything to rubble. And this is precisely the
lesson of every revolution in communication throughout history: no new
medium has ever driven out the old ones. They learn to coexist. The Internet
does not replace good editors, nor does it make good journalists irrelevant. On
the contrary: it makes them even more important than before.

Furthermore, it will continue to be the case, more so than ever, that it is authors
who lend authority, and that no pain, no gain in quality. This motto may be
displayed in the Hamburg School of Journalism, but it does not apply only to
students of journalism. It does not mean that readers and users should be
tormented with stupid, superficial journalism. No pain, no gain in quality: this
phrase demands of journalists in all media, even the Internet, that they give the
maximum effort to achieve their best work. Then journalism will have a
splendid future in store.

Let us return to this image of journalism at the dawn of a new age −− the grey
sky that represents the beginning of the transition from night to day. If we can
locate journalism at this moment of transition, then we can be very happy.
When the night is over, we have the chance to do something exciting with the
day.

Based on a speech made at the annual meeting of netzwerk recherche e.V. in


2009

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1 In 1965, the Federal German Constitutional Court overrode the charges of treason brought
against Der Spiegel in 1962 during the so−called "Spiegel−Affäre"−− ed.
2 In 2007, the Constitutional Court ruled that the police searches of the offices of the
magazine Cicero, on grounds that the magazine had colluded in revealing official secrets,
were a violation of press freedom.
3 A reference to an ongoing quarrel over excessive political influence in the appointment of
the managing director of ZDF; the tageszeitung is an independent, leftwing daily −− ed.
4 In 2009 it emerged that the German national railway company, which at the time was facing
drivers strikes over its privatization plans, had used a PR company to influence press
coverage −− ed.
5 Law regulating permit of the Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Police Office), in 2008
extended to allow a series of anti−terror measures −− ed.
6 In 2005, David Montgomery's media investment company Mecom controversially bought
Berliner Verlag, to which the Berliner Zeitung belongs, and sold it in 2008 after financial
failure −− ed.

Published 2009−12−11
Original in German
Translation by Saul Lipetz
Contribution by Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik
First published in Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 8/2009
© Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik
© Eurozine

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