Field Trip to the Süddeutsche Zeitung

On December 10th, Professional Communication’s students made the third field trip of the semester: we went to the press office of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. It was a different and great experience since we had only been to broadcasting media companies, and here we were able to see for ourselves how a printing company works and learn more about this famous company.

The field trip started with a short video about the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which our nice tour guide presented to us. The video was about the history of the Süddeutsche Zeitung and we learned that the SZ newspaper is the most famous and the best quality daily newspaper in Germany and has a national circulation. It was founded after World War II, and it was first published on October 6, 1945.

Later, our guide explained how the work of making a newspaper is processed. What I found most curious was the fact that he told us that there are several people working on the newspaper every day and some of those people have to move to another country and start a new life there in order to write about what is going on that country. In fact, they have reporters all around the world. Also, they learn that country’s language so they can follow the news there at the present time and then translate them into english and writing the article for newspaper.

The excursion guide also explained that they are responsible for various marketing campaigns for big brands such as BMW and Audi. We were able to see some of that adverts and also to touch the newspapers, which was really great because they were made with different materials in order for people to feel the inside of the car presented on the add. I had never seen anything like that before in a newspaper and it was really nice.

After showing some examples of their newspapers, our guide asked us several questions that made us reflect, for instance: if we ever buy a newspaper or if we simply read the news online. If we think about it, nowadays, with the technological development, most of the people tend to read everything online instead of buying a physical newspaper. That makes it difficult for companies like this one to keep their clients. However, he was happy to explain that there are still many people who enjoy reading their newspaper while feeling the pages and smelling them as well. Furthermore, newspapers are the most reliable source of information, since we can’t believe every information we find online. In short, the people who work on that company don’t think newspapers are going to disappear because these people who enjoy feeling the pages of the newspaper in their hands aren’t going to disappear either, and that is a great thing to know.

For the second part of our field trip, we needed earphones in order to hear our excursion guide, since we were able to go to the place where the magic is made!

We saw how the work of making a newspaper is made, which was very interesting and definitely my favorite part of the field trip! The excursion guide showed every step of making the newspaper and we got to see thousands of editions being made. In fact, he explained that during the weekends, Süddeutsche Zeitung has a higher circulation and has more than 418 170 copies sold, which is impressive! Our excursion guide also told us a story about the company: that the most complicated day so far for the company was on the nine eleven of 2001. On that day, they were watching live news on television and realized what was happening. The writers wrote about the catastrophe and they sold a huge quantity of newspapers the day after as well.

When our field trip came to an end, our friendly excursion guide offered every student an edition of an old Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and a collection of classical music, which was very nice.

In my opinion, this was a very enriching field trip, and it was definitely different from every excursion we had. I really enjoyed it and I hope that the Süddeutsche Zeitung continues to be successful and that people keep buying and investing in newspapers, which are a very legitimate and reliable source of information.

Thank you, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Professional Communication course for another great field trip!