Berlin Newspapers Still Trying To Breach Wall

The location is deliberate. The late Axel Springer was a virulent opponent of communism. He built his Berlin tower in the 1960s as a capitalist bulwark from which visitors to his top-floor office could look down on the horrors of socialism and from which he could broadcast true news across the Wall via the display board.Springers message went unappreciated on the other side, however, where the Communists erected a series of tower blocks along the Leipziger Strasse, blocking out the newspaper tycoons condescending view, as well as his news snippets. Today, the Wall and the display board are there no longer. But the division within the Berlin newspaper market remains.

 

While papers such as the Morgenpost and its traditional rival, Der Tagesspiegel, are strong in west Berlin, they go largely unread in the east. Out of a daily circulation of 185,000, the Morgenpost sells only 30,000 in the east. At the Tagesspiegel, eastern sales run to 7,000 copies out of a circulation of 132,000. From across town, the Berliner Zeitung, which leads the quality market with a circulation of 222,000, is almost exclusively an eastern paper, selling only 40,000 copies in the west.

For publishers and editors, this division -which also extends to the popular dailies such as Springers western tabloid BZ and its eastern counterpart Berliner Kurier - has been one of the frustrating features of the citys post-unification world. When I arrived here I thought one had to produce a paper for the whole city, says Hermann Rudolph, publisher of the Tagesspiegel, who came to Berlin six years ago from Munich. Now, he says, papers have to recognise they cannot pre-empt developments within the city as a whole where real unification is taking its time. Readers are creatures of habit and conservative by nature. People in east and west are also preoccupied by different problems.

Michael Maier, editor of the Berliner Zeitung, says the issues which divide readers in the city include the social aspects of economic collapse and dealing with the after-effects of communism. But Maier, an Austrian who came to Berlin a year ago from the Viennese daily Die Presse, says there is evidence of change. One can see that, as conditions change in the west, certain so-called eastern themes, such as unemployment and the dismantling of the welfare state, are of interest to westerners as well.

Also, he says, as eastern living standards rise so the interests of easterners are changing. Overcoming the division remains one of the prime goals of all Berlin newspapers as it means they can offer advertisers a wider spread of readers in Germanys largest city. But the real prize in the battle for the quality market will come with the arrival of the German government from Bonn in two or three years time.

All papers hope to profit from the influx of politicians, civil servants and lobbyists. But they also assume that one title will become the local quality paper which will acquire national importance. In preparation for this, extensive changes have been made to the papers. New editors have been hired, redesigns commissioned and star journalists bought up from elsewhere. Maier recently caused a stir in media circles when he snapped up four journalists from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a leading quality national paper.

Such changes have been expensive. The Tagesspiegel is said to be costing its owners, the Holtzbrinck group, which also owns the business daily Handelsblatt, some 750,000 a year. Springer makes a profit with the Morgenpost and BZ, but the company has seen its traditional dominance of the Berlin market weakened, particularly through the arrival of publishing heavyweight, Gruner and Jahr which bought the Berliner Zeitung after the collapse of communism.

The battle for hegemony has made Berlin the most competitive newspaper market in German, where cities typically have just one paper.

Berlin has five local dailies. A further four - the Springer national title Die Welt, the alternative and anarchic Tageszeitung, and two former Communist eastern papers, Neues Deutschland and Junge Welt - are produced in the city but, nominally at least, targeted at a national audience. Competition has led to an outburst of promotions and enticing offers aimed at signing up subscribers, while on the advertising side there has been a move towards discounting. Special deals on price and placing abound, although no one likes to admit it, says an advertising agency executive.

Rudolph says it will take another five to seven years to see who wins out in the overall battle for Berlins quality newspaper market. Despite Tagesspiegels losses, he may be the person with most cause for optimism. Audited circulation figures show the Berliner Zeitung and the Morgenpost in consistent decline and the Tagesspiegel rising slightly.

The Tagesspiegel is also deemed to have the most attractive readership profile, with more affluent and better educated readers. Overcoming the division between east and west remains one of the prime goals of all newspapers in the city.