Field Trip to SZ Druckhaus

Right before the Christmas Holidays, on December 10^th, the group of Professional Communication in Munich had their third field trip to the SZ Druckhaus. The SZ is characterized by open-minded and independent newspaper, and has their own printing press. The printing plant of the publishing house Süddeutscher Verlag is located within the outskirts of Munich, concretely in Steinhausen.  Nevetherless, this printing plant was previously in the center of the city, but due to the expansion of the new printing machines and the high environmental pollution caused by the traffic, the location was no longer acceptable and the site had to be relocated to where it is today. As an interesting fact, the Süddeutsche Zeitung was the first newspaper in Bavaria after the war. It was first published in October 1945, and was the foundation for a free press in Bavaria.

We met up at the front door and as always, had a guided tour of the place. We started off with a brief video of the newspaper and the printing press, which explained its main features and the evolution of the press overtime. Every day, the newspaper provides news and information from different departments such as science, politics, sports, culture, opinion columns, reports… Since the newspaper covers a lot of different topics, hundreds of permanent editors and freelancers write for SZ. Also, approximately 40 correspondents and different authors are based around different major German cities such as Berlin, Munich, Essen, Frankfurt… and in most important cities within Europe, writing about international events. This printing house not only prints majority of the edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, but also partial editions of newspapers from other publishing houses and orders from private clients. Luckily, we got to see lots of examples of advertisements that they had printed for different clients. My favorite one was a really big one from BMW, that featured one of their newest cars. Since Advertising and Public Relations is one of my majors, this part of the field trip was very exciting for me, as I got to compare an extensive number of ads from different categories and fields. Since they are lots of nationalities within our group, a lot of interesting questions came up regarding the variety of newspapers from different countries, which where kindly answered by the tour guide.

After this introduction, we started the walking tour within the offices. Along our tour, the tour guide told us some inside facts about the company. As an interesting fact, we learned that the Süddeutsche Zeitung is the largest national quality daily newspaper in Germany, reaching 1.13 million readers every day. As the tour guide told us, physical newspapers are becoming more and more uncommon in today´s society thanks to the Internet revolution. Nevertheless, 70% of their readers are subscribed to the newspaper, which is an amazing achievement for the company!

During the last part of the tour, we went to the printing plants, which surprisingly are one of the most modern newspaper printing plants in Europe. The centerpiece is the offset rotary machine, which stands in a rotating hall that is 185 meters long and 18 meters high. The tour guide told us that around 100,000 copies of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, as well as several foreign titles and customer orders, can be printed in full color per hour. As an interesting fact, he told us that one of the worst days for the newspapers was when the terrorist attack of 9/11 took place. As it happened during the evening, the next day´s paper was almost finished, nevertheless they had to change it in order to include the latest news. However, all of the companies that were paying for advertisings to be introduced in the paper, understood the situation and moved their ads for the next day´s paper. Even though I do not study journalism, I find it an authentic job for stories like these.

At the end of the tour, they gave us some presents, including the next day´s paper. I thought it was a very kind gesture from the company, but wished I could speak some German to understand it! For most of us, it was our first time on a printing plant and we loved everything: the smell of fresh paper, the heavy machinery, the newspapers perfectly displayed… It was an amazing experience! Nevertheless, pictures were not allowed inside the printing plant, and I really wished I could have captured it. But overall, we had a great time during the field trip and we learned a lot of interesting things.