Michael Stengl, Süddeutsche Zeitung: ‘’Qualitative journalism will stay important’’

Group interview at the printery of Süddeutsche Zeitung

9/11 2023

Preparing an interview for our excursion to the printery of the Süddeutsche Zeitung was challenging, since it was hard to imagine what to expect. After getting an introduction from the company’s sales consultant Mr Michael Stengl, we as a group realized that a lot of questions might come up during the tour. Being able to look behind the curtains of the production of such a big, well-known and modern newspaper is of importance in one’s understanding of the news-media sector in large, and specifically in a German or even Bavarian context. During the introduction Mr Stengl touched on subjects such as the history of the newspaper, the journey from local to global news-coverage and the challenges of tomorrow for the news-sector in general. ‘’We have a digital strategy for the future. There is a development happening which leads to a slow decrease of the printed circulation and an impressive rise of the digital version.’’

Authors: Julius, Samuel

How did a newspaper that started as a local newspaper become so big?

‘’It started with the authors who began writing for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Quality is the basis for the image of a national newspaper. It’s an advantage to have the national part and the local part. People who buy a newspaper, especially a quality paper,  want to know what’s going on in the world, but they also want to know what’s going on in their neighborhood. That combination of international and local is what gives an advantage.’’

How did the Süddeutsche Zeitung become famous?

‘’It all has to do with the image. This image is built because of the way we write. Important people give us interviews because they know they get special readers, people who are interesting to them like professors at universities, leading business people and so on. The readers are intellectual so it makes sense for people to talk to the paper.’’

What would be your role when reporting news? Do you try to always be the first one on a subject or rather wait and focus on giving an in-depth story maybe later than your competition?

‘’It’s really a challenge to check, to prove, whether the news we get is correct and not fake news. So with that said, we are not very keen on being the first to write about it. We write about it when we are sure that it has really happened. Otherwise we would stop and say we wait another few days. What we are famous for is partly our  investigative journalism. For example;

A few years ago, we had the Panama-papers case. We got data material and it took us nearly one year to read and to check all this data. That was really a tough thing to do, because it had to do with leading politicians. Later we got a spot in that film they made about it. So, if you prove something and write about it, you must be 100% sure that it is not fake news. And it takes time. 

So this is not a question about being the first, since the thing is you must be sure you have checked everything. The image, the facts and the sources and so on.’’

How do you write for a target audience, but still stay neutral?

‘’We try to be neutral in reports. We also have an opinion page with clear standpoints. The readers will get certain standpoints to a topic. Some readers will agree with the standpoint, but others will disagree with it.’’

How does the SZ write about war? Are there rules journalists need to confirm to? (for example the Ukrainian- or the Israeli war)

‘’You have to talk to different responsible people. You have to talk to the government, to the opposition, to people in Gaza, in the Westbank and near Lebanon. It’s a very serious situation at the moment. There are different cultures and different leading characters. The correspondents talk to the people who live there. They were first in Tel Aviv and they’re now in Gaza. They hear different sides of the story. They will see a wide range of opinions talking to so many different people.’’

How does the editorial look at the demonstrations for Palestine?

‘’They need to report about, write down what people say and think. They need to think about how those people are coming to this viewing point. That’s important with different views, even in Munich you have demonstrations with completely different viewing points. Our journalists will go to these demonstrations and talk to them. They will write about it and on the opinion page with a critical touch.’’

Did the SZ ever have a problem with expressing its viewing point?

‘’No, we are really happy with the reactions. Because of those reactions we get to know our readers. It is very interesting, when you read an article you get your own expression, you have your own opinion, if you read about something you can think ‘well I see it completely different.’ Another reader can read the same article and really like the way the author wrote it. We have a page ‘Letters to the editors’ you can read on that, so readers can see it all very differently. If 30% is happy with the article and 70% is upset about it, we place 30% of the people who agree with us and 70% of the people who are upset about it. A few months ago we had a view article about a Berlin politician and the reactions were very divided. That is a good sign, when readers write letters to the editors.’’

How would you say that the Süddeutche Zeitung is adapting to the changing media landscape in general?

‘’Of course there is a digital strategy for the future. This is a development, a slow decrease of the printed circulation, and an impressive rise of the digital version. But what’s different compared to 15 years ago? There were competitors, and a very, very delicate thing is what’s going on with the internet. With fake news, for example, a serious problem. That’s what I said. The key to democratic engagement, serious problems are fake news, missing serious sources. So a problem is, if you read an article with fake news and a radical direction, the thing is that if you like this article, the following articles could be interesting for you. Then you are in a “fake news bubble” and if you ever tried to argue with someone in that bubble and you know the sources are not serious, that is the problem. And that is the reason why quality journalism will be important. I hope it will be important enough. So we still do our best for the print, for the printed circulation because there’s still many subscribers and many readers would appreciate the printed word. But we develop with passion and energy, the digital way of the paper. Going towards the digital future of the paper.’’

Would you compare the impact of the Internet changing the industry in the 90’s with the impact of AI today?

‘’It will definitely change a few things, right? But I’m sure there will be regulations for the AI so what helps is if you have to have tried it, I’m sure you have that experience. You tried to send an order to AI to the company OpenAI.com and said, “please write me an article about that. I need ten facts to the following”. Then you get an answer. And you think: “well it’s not entertaining enough, could you work with it?” The way you challenge the AI that will get the answer but the problem is usually with the sources being trustworthy. Continuing on that, how does it influence journalism? 

Of course you can try a few things but one of the reasons is because it reproduces itself, so the quality is not guaranteed. It’s quite interesting and of course it’s dangerous, because you could produce fake news very easily.

So I’m sure you all know this Barack Obama spot, you see him speaking with the almost perfect AI generated voice. “It’s Barack Obama!”. On a high level that would confuse a lot of people, it could create serious problems.’’