A Closer Look at Media in Germany

Over the past two weeks, I had an opportunity to visit two of Germany’s media outlets, TZ Merkur and Süddeutsche Zeitung. This was my first time visiting a news organization in person, and I was excited to discover the media landscape in Germany first-hand. 

The first site was TZ Merkur. Here, I learned some interesting facts about running a newspaper. For example, when editors don’t have a front news story for a Sunday, they will look to already-prepared materials about health as a back-up. This is because people are always interested in health issues. I thought that it was a clever way of keeping the paper afloat during slow news days. Another thing that our tour guide told us is that sometimes readers can bring in the biggest news stories. They may call the TZ Merkur about a certain problem they face in their life, and a story covering that can become very popular if that is a problem faced by many people in Munich/Bavaria. It was very interesting to learn that readers can play an active role in deciding what gets covered in the media.

After the presentation, we got a tour of the TZ Merkur office. We visited different parts of the building and had a chance to see people working on various sections of the paper. We saw a woman who was in charge of everything related to the Pope, a team dedicated solely to the sports section, a man who was responsible for politics-related topics, and many more. We also got to visit the recording studio, where video/audio materials are produced. It was really cool to see actual people producing the paper in real-time, but I also thought about how much hard work they put into it. 

As a wrap-up, we each received our own edition TZ Merkur, with a photo of us as a group on the front.

The second field trip we made was to Süddeutsche Printing House. I was excited to get a glimpse inside Germany’s one of the most renowned newspapers. After a short presentation, we got a tour of the printing factory. There was something fascinating about watching newspapers being manufactured with machines. Huge rolls of blank paper were cut, passed down to different machines, and printed with various inks multiple times. The finished papers flew over our heads in unison and landed in cardboard boxes, ready to be shipped out the next day. The whole process was nearly fully automated. At the end of the tour, we received a copy of the next day’s Süddeutsche Zeitung along with a reprinted version of the paper published in 1945. I think these will be very special souvenirs that I will take home at the end of my exchange.