Süddeutsche Zeitung – a resilient behemoth of print journalism

Visiting Süddeutsche Zeitung’s printing plant was both inspiring and insightful, revealing how the company sees the future of newspapers and how the physical printing process actually works.

We began with a briefing from an SZ executive, who walked us through the paper’s history and influence with the help of an old introductory video. From the start, they made it clear that high-quality journalism and physical editions remain their top priorities, combining a lively newsroom that values pluralism and irony, especially towards politics, with innovative printing practices. SZ is owned by a consortium of publishers (82%) and a family-owned company (12%), bound by an agreement that guarantees editorial independence for the redaction. And there is still a strong appetite for this kind of journalism in Germany: more than 150,000 subscribers are willing to pay around €1,000 a year to have the paper delivered at home every morning. Most of them are over 50 and relatively wealthy, but above all they are willing to invest in their minds, putting a high price on what freedom of speech and critical thinking are worth. All of this suddenly feels very real when you see a fraction of the 450,000 copies printed every day “flying” above your head in the plant.

Producing quality journalism in today’s media economy requires a smart strategy of resistance, so that the print business can keep thriving, and the plant doesn’t end up as a museum piece. While we were walking across those impressive and noisy machines, we learned that the paper rolling off the presses at that moment wasn’t SZ at all: other newspapers, like Die Welt, also use this plant to share printing costs.As mentioned earlier, SZ also bets on innovation, not only to attract readers, but as a tool for advertisers: they have created special paper textures that mimic the feeling of a BMW steering wheel, and even pages with a custom scent. They also need a solid strategy because external factors are driving up the price of white paper. For example, the surge in brown packaging from Amazon means more complex, and more expensive, sorting processes to recover clean white paper.

All in all, this glimpse of SZ’s printing house gave us a very good understanding of their current challenges, but also showed us that resisting the digital tide is possible. The question is : for how long ?