Breakdown, Blogging and Breakfast-Traditions

I wrote this piece for some other class on international media systems, but I thought it might fit here to, so have fun with it!

BREAKDOWN, BLOGGING AND BREAKFAST - TRADITIONS
WHY GERMAN PRINT MEDIA IS IN A CRISIS, BUT DOESN’T HAVE TO FEAR THE BLOGOSPHERE
‘Crisis’ seems to be one of the most popular words in the latest years. Sometimes it seems as if every sector of society is approaching a crisis or allready right in the middle of one. There seem to be different types of crises. For example we have the economic crisis which appeared as a shock in 2008. Suddenly the market crashed and nobody seemed to be prepared for that. To some people who aren’t into economics that much and didn’t see the breakdown coming, it was comparable to a Tsunami or other natural disasters. One day you go to the beach of Jaffna, the next day there is no beach anymore. One day the world economy is fine, the next day banks are out of money, companies stop their production and some people lose not only their jobs, but everything they have in life.

It’s different with the so-called ‘Media Crisis’. This one isn’t shocking, but creeping. At the latest since the development of Web 2.0 it is clear that the media landscape worldwide is about to change. This challenge between ‘new’ and ‘old’ media has turned into a crisis. Also in Germany.

In the last few years newspapers have experienced several difficulties. The Internet became more important in the potential readers’ all-day life. Especially the young audience lost interest in old media and concentrated more on new tools. Since the beginning of the new century, newspapers in Germany have a vastly decreasing coverage. In addition, or better: as a result of that, the World Wide Web became more and more interesting for advertisement. Print media lost a huge part of their financial power.

What are the consequences? As we know, one of the first steps of a company that has financial problems is to dismiss some employees. Media companies are in no way different. The German Federation of Journalists discovered that every seventh journalist in Germany was unemployed at the end of 2002. In 2009 the WAZ Media Group, the second strongest media group in Germany, published its concept against the crisis. One of the main intentions of the company is the reduction of 300 of its 891 workplaces. Many editorial offices have to cover a lack of staff and others even close down. What automatically suffers from that is the journalistic quality of the newspapers. That annoys the readership and brings us back to the decrease of newspaper coverage. It’s like a vicious circle.

Next to the economic struggles print media have to face other challenges. Again the main competitor seems to be the Internet. People are using the Internet extensively in their everyday life. The Web has become an important factor also in worklife. A survey published on FAZ Online shows that German business men spend at least two hours in the Internet every day. In opposition to that the time spent on reading the newspaper decreases. The good old tradition of sitting at the breakfast table and exchanging the different parts of the paper with your family is fading. Nowadays we simply don’t have time for that. We rush through the news in order to not lose track and have something to (small-) talk about. So we are happy to have the Internet which offers us the main issues in short. Of Course there are many online offers from the ‘old media’ companies. Every big newspaper in Gremany has its own platform in the Internet. But as Hubert Burda, one of the most important publisher in Germany, points out: The media companies very often do not profit from them. Sometimes the costs for the web presence are even higher than its benefit. The only ones that profit from the new webpages, claims Burda, are search engines like Google or Yahoo.

But the Internet has more to give than only newspages. One phenomenon that has gained more and more importance over the last few years are blogs. Especially in the US the blogosphere is vast. Blogs shape the media landscape. During the run for US President in 2008 and also in everyday politics blogs play a significant role. For example Larry Summers, the economical advisor of Barack Obama, reads blogs regularly. American bloggers have the chance to get really famous. Some of them even live from their blogs (again because of advertisement). And also ‘old media’ have discovered this field for themselves. Many newspapers or TV channels run their own blog-columns. A lot of journalists have entered the blogosphere. The phenomenon of blogs is largely discussed in America: Can blogging allready be seen as a new form of journalism? Should readers rely on blogs rather than on traditional media? Do bloggers make news?

In Germany we have to ask a different question, first: Where are the bloggers? As the Digital Life Report showed, in 2006 around 45 % of German internet users didn’t even know what a blog is. Not to mention the little number of those who followed a blog or even wrote one on their own. Of 115 million blogs world wide in 2008 only 1 % were German (and remember that ‘German’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘from Germany’). Germany simply is no blogger-nation one might say, but the question is: Why?
Several bloggers tried to find an aswer to this and a discussion about blogging or not blogging in Germany broke out. Don Dahlmann for example collected seven points that in his opinion explain why blogging in Germany doesn’t work (yet). One of his main arguments was that blogs aren’t respected in Germany. ‘Serious’ Media (and by that he means ‘old media’) does not show enough interest in blogs and therefore they aren’t noted by the audience, too. Felix Disselhoff, another blogger, published an answer to Dahlmann and said his point was right: “Nobody talks about it”, he writes and claims this to be the main reason for the lack of popularity of blogs.

Felix Salomon, also a German blogger, published his ten reasons why blogs don’t work in Germany in the magazine of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of the most respected newspapers in Germany. His reasons are mainly cultural. Blogging just doesn’t seem to fit the Germans. He says that Germans in general highly emphasize reputation. Especially media is supposed to have a high reputation. The role of the media as a watchdog of politics is very important to Germans. That might have its reasons in the political history of the country. As a consequence German readership demands high quality and political independence. If someone reads the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or the Süddeutsche Zeitung or Die Zeit, he or she does that because of these papers’ esteem. He knows that he can trust in what is published there.

So, Germans are a very demanding and also very suspicious readership. They don’t trust easily. Hence, they won’t trust any blogger who comes along and writes whatever he or she wants. As Heribert Prantl puts it: Newspapers in Germany are and will always be relevant for the system of democracy. They do not have to fear blogs. He argues that we tend to think the state of play in America is the same in Germany. That is not true. Yes, the German media, especially the print media is in a crisis just as other media around the world. But German press has its very own crisis. It cannot be compared to the one in America. The challenges in Germany are mostly economic. Media companies have to face a lot of financial struggles, because of new media. But they still have their reputation. I hope that this reputation lasts and helps them out of the crisis. The good old tradition of reading the newspaper at the breakfast table may suffer from our constant lack of time during work days, but don’t forget about the week ends. Go and have breakfast! Enjoy reading newspapers. They need our support.


Isn't it funny that I post this one on my Blog ;)