Dear Readers,

Journalistic accuracy is our top priority. That includes meticulous reporting, adherence to the facts and fairness in presentation. Special formats, of course, allow for the presentation of opinion, but they are clearly marked as such. Our greatest goal is truthfulness.

But we make mistakes. We are not perfect. But we are eager to improve. That is why we welcome criticism. A critique of the website and the magazine is an important element of our daily conferences, during which we are told what we have done well and what we could have done better.

Now, we are taking a new step. We have understood that our readers value transparency and that it is an important element of trust. We want to demonstrate to them that we are open to criticism. We want them to know what an expert thinks about our work.

For that reason, I have asked media scientist Bernhard Poerksen from the University of Tübingen to regularly write an essay criticizing DER SPIEGEL. Poerksen is likely the best-known observer and critic of the media in Germany. Once each quarter, he will address a significant issue in the news and analyze how we report on it on our website and in our magazine. He is free to approach the task however he likes. He has complete access to our archive and can speak to DER SPIEGEL staff as he sees fit. We want him to be able to develop a comprehensive understanding. His essays will not be edited by us. Whatever he writes will be published just as written, even if it hurts.

What do you, as a reader, gain from this initiative? Perhaps Poerksen will discuss a concern that has been bothering you as well. Maybe he will inspire you to think about DER SPIEGEL in a new way. It could be that you have ideas for what our critic should address in a future essay. In SPIEGEL Debatte, you have the possibility to discuss this article.

Criticism of DER SPIEGEL is first and foremost criticism of the editor-in-chief. I will take to heart all that I read from Poerksen and from you and then discuss with the newsroom how we can improve.

Dirk Kurbjuweit, editor-in-chief

I. The Fury of Intelligentsia

Quite some time ago, an email landed in my inbox from a former DER SPIEGEL editor. He wanted to pitch me a story and, as I quickly realized, stir things up a bit. Then, a couple of months ago, he approached me personally on the sidelines of an event in Hamburg, perhaps because I still hadn’t shown much interest. He said we should meet up for "a tea or something harder.” And speak openly. He is plagued, he told me, each and every week by the wrenching, agonizing decision as to whether he should cancel his subscription to DER SPIEGEL – dismayed by what he described as an "incipient decline under the dictates of late-capitalist sales imperatives” he had observed at his former employer. He accused the magazine of being recklessly focused on what readers want, clickbait instead of deep reporting, burgeoning carelessness and a loss of journalistic direction. "Writing what people want. And producing what sells” – that, he seemed to be saying, was the motto of the new era.

I was able to distill three specific questions out of his poisonously critical email. First: How might it be possible to determine whether his accusations have any merit? My response: There is a need for ethnographic research, confidential discussions, backstage observations made behind the newsroom curtain. I have done that. Second: Are the claims being made by the former journalist even true? My response, which I will substantiate at length, is: No. But as the fight for journalistic independence in this era of digital feudalism has become more intense, there is less scope for flexibility.

And third: What do the reproaches contained in the email I received say about the state of media criticism and the "Fury of Intelligentsia” that DER SPIEGEL wrote about way back in 2018. I can already present my entire response, and it isn’t particularly forgiving. I believe that there exists a body of criticism of journalism as it is practiced today – from Richard David Precht to Harald Welzer ("Selbstgleichschaltung”), from Peter Sloterdijk ("Lügenäther”) to the kind of libertarian digital-detox schlock one finds in Rolf Dobelli’s "Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life” – that is focused more on defamation than improvement. Criticism which, in its flailing self-righteousness, suffers from a twofold deficit. On the one hand, there is a lack of first-hand knowledge of newsroom dynamics, a want of nuanced insight into the practice of journalism. On the other, one notes a dearth of any kind of systematic understanding of all the forces exerting more pressure on serious journalism than ever before.

With this essay, I wish to attempt – clear-eyed about the possibility of failure – to present a different, more tempered form of media criticism, ideally informed by a systemic perspective, yet rooted in the concrete and deliberately distant from the breathless rhetoric of the "lamestream media” truthers that has become so fashionable. Given this perspective, the task becomes that of identifying the forces currently being exerted on DER SPIEGEL specifically and journalism more broadly, before then entering the machine room of editorial operations to ultimately conclude with a couple of recommendations for improvement.

II. The Great Transformation

The networking of the world, the third great communications revolution following the invention of writing and of the printing press, has become reality. We are, as observed by Marshall McLuhan, the magician of media theory, "surrounded by the nervous systems of all of humanity. They have been externalized and form an electronic environment.” Over is the comfortable era of gatekeeper journalism, in which reporters and editors, standing at the portal to the public world, could determine what is relevant and interesting. Today, there is a cacophony of voices, an exploding mass of information – and a shortage of attention. Everything appears at breakneck speed, all jumbled together in one’s newsfeed, competing with numbing intensity on a single communication channel – the mundane, the moving, the monstrous.

And yet the changes aren’t easy to grasp, they are unclear, full of contradictions, bizarre contrasts. Media power is becoming diffuse, reshaping, becoming more fleeting and more accessible, while at the same time organizing into aggressive monopolies. And it’s all happening at once. On the one hand, a great number of people are gaining a voice and visibility – and that, at its core, is a positive development. On the other hand, paradoxically, a drift towards digital feudalism can be observed. Here, just a single number to illustrate the point: Last year, just three companies – Google, Meta and Amazon – raked in more than half of all worldwide advertising revenue. That means that just a handful of players and platforms have taken control of the ad market, once the central source of revenues for journalism, and regulate the flow of information for their audiences of billions by way of maximally opaque algorithms focused unswervingly on profits. The new gatekeepers have long since taken up their positions, hugely influential yet strangely invisible.

The consequence: All that defines serious journalism is now being renegotiated, frequently at a dizzying pace. "What journalism is, how stories are reported, told and presented,” reads an insightful strategy paper produced by DER SPIEGEL more than 10 years ago, "how it reaches the users, through which channels and in what shape and content, how it can assert itself against new competitors, how it can develop a new relationship with its readers (…) and, more than anything, how it can finance itself” – all that must be rethought and perhaps radically reconceived. But how? Where are the dangers, the risks, the dilemmas?

III. In the Machine Room

A brief note on methodology. I visited DER SPIEGEL headquarters in Hamburg as often as I could in May and June. I spoke with senior editors, members of the management team and more than 30 editors. I examined internal material, spent time in the newsroom and tested out at the computer how to send out breaking news alerts and push notifications, and how to optimize headlines so they can easily be found by Google. I watched as cross-media editors struggled to draw attention to a DER SPIEGEL exclusive in the universes of TikTok and Instagram, and I saw what happens when the newsroom suddenly mobilizes to cover a huge news event (in this case, the knife attack at Hamburg’s central train station on May 23, 2025). Following the on-site visits and the interviews (for a total transcript volume of 501 pages), I spent the month of July, surrounded by stacks of paper, trying to establish some form of clarity. During the analysis phase, I stumbled across four dilemmas, the expressions and consequences of conflicts and competing aims that are deeply anchored in our media system.

I’ll call the first dilemma "The Dilemma of Interest versus Relevance” – a rather unique conflict of ultimate aims. Every newsroom today can easily see in real time what readers are actually interested in and which articles or podcasts trigger them to sign up for a subscription. The DER SPIEGEL article that remains the record holder for bringing in the most subscriptions focuses on the question of how love can be made to last (6,528 subscriptions). Revelations in the MeToo debate also proved quite successful, as have articles focused on the difficult or successful relationship with one’s own parents. A story headlined "When Mom Is Unable to Love” has thus far brought in 2,935 subscriptions. An article about the secrets of a successful father-daughter relationship managed 1,426 subscriptions. Such real time numbers and the immediate visibility of audience reactions could lead one to grow cynical, because some random irrelevant story could end up attracting vastly more eyeballs than a deeply reported feature. This could lead to a reorientation toward the agreeable, smoothing over the unruly and inevitably complex.

But I saw none of that. On the contrary, when a classic DER SPIEGEL exclusive (in this case, the more than 1,100-page report compiled by German domestic security officials on a possible ban of the radical right wing AfD party, analyzed overnight by a team of four journalists) causes a stir, it is celebrated in internal mails with palpable relief. Under a previous editor-in-chief, a bottle of bubbly was sometimes handed out for explosive investigative pieces and successful real-time live tickers, but also for pieces that generated a particularly high number of subscriptions. Later, the reward was oil and vinegar (leading to the in-house joke: "Only DER SPIEGEL can turn champagne into vinegar!”) Today, the reward is just a few warm words during editorial conferences.

Beyond that, the magazine has held onto unpopular columnists for years and prints excellently reported reports about climate conferences on the other side of the world despite the shockingly low number of readers such pieces attract. Correctly so, in my opinion. As an aside: My own series of analysis pieces I have written for DER SPIEGEL is also rather discouraging: Nineteen subscriptions for three critical essays and several months of work. But a few determined fans, editors have told me comfortingly, do actually read my reflections all the way through. But seriously: What can be observed is the focused effort toward finding the right balance between interest and relevance, pressured by economic imperatives, yet clearly committed to journalistic ideals – data-informed, not data-driven.

The second dilemma is that between speed and precision. The problem is clear: Moving fast leads to mistakes. Moving too slowly, by contrast, risks falling behind in the increasingly intense battle for attention. Here, what the internet philosopher Peter Glaser once expressed with unmatched clarity still holds true: "Information moves fast; truth takes time.” The DER SPIEGEL newsroom is guided by the maxim: "Be first, but first, be right.” That doesn’t mean that no mistakes are made (recall, for example, the embarrassing push notification on the banning of the right-wing extremist NPD party), but it means that great effort is invested in avoiding them. As part of that effort, two people read push notifications before they are sent out (the "four-eyes principle”), and only those facts that have been confirmed by a second source are printed ("two-source principle”). Another strategy is that of rapidly forming groups of experts – temporary mini-newsrooms – for large, breaking news events (a terror attack, a natural catastrophe, the outbreak of war, etc.).

My conclusion: Like few other news outlets, DER SPIEGEL can respond to unpredictable, catastrophic events with enormous journalistic impact and pinpoint immediacy. An example: At 6 p.m. on May 23, a mentally ill woman began wildly stabbing people between tracks 13 and 14 at the main train station in Hamburg, seriously injuring many and leaving some with life-threatening wounds. She was ultimately tackled by a Syrian man and led away by the police. Even before it was clear what had actually happened, the internet was frothing. Yet another knife assault by an asylum seeker who should long since have been deported, railed right-wingers. Another attack, of course.

Meanwhile – it’s Friday evening – DER SPIEGEL journalists begin calling into the newsroom and coming together in chat groups. One editor calls from the fitness studio, wondering if he has time for a quick shower before firing up his computer. Another, who is heading off on vacation the next morning, decides to delay packing until after midnight. Still others go straight to the train station, where they ultimately spend several hours writing snippets for a liveblog. It almost seems as though the editorial team, still scattered just moments earlier, has been galvanized by an invisible jolt of energy, triggering the start of a fascinating, self-organizing collaboration to create largely free coverage for more than 330,000 readers who follow the reporting for hours on end. Only the interview with the Syrian man Muhammad Al Muhammad, who courageously pinned down the woman until the authorities could arrive, was placed behind the paywall. Result: 46 subscriptions.

The third dilemma can be found in the tension between DER SPIEGEL’s traditional magazine identity, the evolving needs of its readers and changing habits of use. This, too, is a balancing act. DER SPIEGEL journalism tries to be lot of different things all at once – critical and clear-eyed, but also approachable and relatable, encouraging and sensitive. And it does so because the horrors of the world combined with a seemingly never-ending stream of crises has intensified a broad yearning for a bit of light and warmth – think news fatigue – particularly among young people. The core of the dilemma: The traditional identity of a newsmagazine tends to exude an aura of severity and distance, visible in its public image and, frequently at odds with the mood in the newsroom, manifesting as joyless professionalism. The influential weekly paper Die Zeit, which has become a central competitor to DER SPIEGEL, is the hip, slightly quirky, vivacious aunt at the family reunion with whom you might discuss your latest LSD trip, as one journalist described it. DER SPIEGEL, by contrast, is the taciturn, cigar-smoking uncle in the corner who ultimately has a better grasp on reality.

This is the target of my critique. In contrast to Die Zeit, DER SPIEGEL experiments far too little with other, more unique, unexpected formats, partially trapped in the old collective identity of a newsmagazine with its somewhat severe tone – a place where, for many (many) years, it wasn’t even standard practice to attach bylines to articles. The publication does, to be sure, send out constructively encouraging newsletters with a more personal touch. The publication is also, of course, home to numerous prominent columnists – who, however, are frequently not employed by DER SPIEGEL, meaning they follow their own agendas, yet are nevertheless seen by outsiders as ambassadors of the magazine. Sure, there are genuinely instructive features – videos on the website in which journalists discuss the reporting process. And yet, there is a need for other, more diverse, more imaginative forms of address – for three reasons. First, people are simply extremely interested in people. Second, social media frequently sets the pace, transforming approachability and relatability into a new norm. And third, individual people ensure recognizability amid the vast, thunderous, all-encompassing soup of sources and brands in our networked world.

I’ll call the fourth dilemma the problem of unpredictability. On the search for promising business models, and this is the challenge, it is necessary to adhere to rules and principles that are not consistent with serious, dispassionate journalism. Again, a few facts for context. Around 25 years ago, DER SPIEGEL earned two-thirds of its revenue from advertisements and one-third from subscription sales. Today, the situation is reversed: Ad revenues only account for a third of revenues while two-thirds come from subscriptions. The number of digital subscriptions, which now number 335,000, is decisive. Revenues generated by DER SPIEGEL’s print product are still quite substantial, but they are slowly waning as magazine readership ages. As such, it is vital to attract younger readers. For that reason alone, it is necessary to be present on TikTok, Instagram and WhatsApp, even if there is no money to be earned there. Worse still: Apps and platforms (the open web is practically a thing of the past) can push journalistic offerings into the void of invisibility. Here, two rather different examples: Following Donald Trump’s election victory, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg suddenly suspended Facebook fact-checking in the U.S. Google, meanwhile, has begun producing prominently placed search responses using its own AI program (Gemini). Journalistic sources only appear in the small print, if at all, receiving few or no clicks (zero-click search). Online media outlets that have long relied on Google as a primary driver of traffic could thus suddenly lose their audience – a potentially fatal game because the world in which they were trying to earn a bit of money has suddenly ceased to exist.

That, then, is the core of the dilemma, the broader picture: Serious journalism is engaged in a ruinous struggle for autonomy that is largely unrecognized and misunderstood, both societally and politically. And to survive, it must participate in a frequently tabloid-esque, perpetually shifting attention lottery, the rules of which can be altered at will by Big Tech. What can be done? DER SPIEGEL has oriented its strategy toward the New York Times, a paper with a global reputation and more than 11 million digital subscribers. Shocking but true, the Times has attracted countless subscribers with the help of cooking recipes, games, lifestyle magazines and fitness coverage – essentially using entertainment and practical content to subsidize quality.

What about DER SPIEGEL? In 2023, the magazine purchased a majority stake in the football magazine 11FREUNDE and integrated it into the company in addition to acquiring the cooking magazine Effilee in 2025 to expand its offerings. A paid, extraordinarily successful digital supplement ("Your Daily Extra at SPIEGEL+”), including fitness and relationship advice, is offered prominently at the top of the homepage. Meanwhile, as the news desk has been significantly expanded, the team continues to compete for reach with freely available stories, aiming to cultivate a core audience of subscribers. The ultimate goal is that of becoming a platform in its own right and preserving journalistic independence – with the puzzle, lifestyle and practical content serving as essential support.

All of that is risky, to be sure. There is a danger of becoming mired in the swamp of entertainment should the journalistic compass lose its pull. But total news purism can only be demanded, and a naïve disdain for the popular maintained, by those who have no clue about the narrowing room for maneuver available to journalistic publications and who have no idea about the real interests of readers or the fragile economics of quality in the age of platform-driven capitalism. Again, serious journalism – despite some bizarre, absolutely reprehensible mistakes – is not the enemy. Precisely that is overlooked by the Precht-Welzer-Sloterdijk-Dobelli faction of media detractors as they produce linguistically refined barstool babble – resentments dressed up in academia-speak. In fact, it is a handful of Big Tech companies, the modern-day feudal masters, that are destroying the public sphere, the intellectual domain essential to liberal democracies.

IV. Ideas and Proposals

How will things continue? Will we soon be donning our smart glasses and asking them to quickly extract the funny part of some podcast while at the same time, a personal AI assistant calculates the best route to where we want to go? When we get to that point, will 600 journalists still be working for DER SPIEGEL? I don’t know, and it would be absurd for me to act as though I had some all-knowing prophecy on offer. But I do want to proffer four rather different proposals, if for no other reason than because I wish to promote here a form of media criticism that doesn’t content itself with smug takedowns of superficial phenomena.

Proposal number one: DER SPIEGEL possesses an amazing archive, a treasure of information that could, I believe, also be offered up to subscribers. Why not embrace the blossoming AI revolution in a distinctly journalistic fashion by creating a chatbot (working title: SpiegelCompact) that allows readers to query specific contexts, backstories, definitions and the like directly from the article they are reading – a kind of conversational fact-checking? It would be a form of rebellion against the erosion of attention spans – keeping readers on the site in this era of constant interruptions by offering them the possibility of digging deeper into a wealth of knowledge, deeply researched information and context that makes you smarter!

Proposal number two is perhaps a bit surprising, but is meant completely seriously. Die Zeit, which has become a fierce competitor, has established its profile through a process that has unfolded over several years, characterized by a less severe form of journalism combined with community building and a universe of podcasts streamed millions of times. And yet, the paper has left behind a gap – because its enormously knowledgeable coverage of religion and spirituality, astounding as that might be, is nevertheless incredibly narrow. It frequently focuses on the Church as an institution, Catholicism, the pope. I don’t get it. Because public interest in Asian religions, indigenous knowledge, mindful meditation, the psychedelic renaissance, awareness and brain research is simply enormous. This journalistic vacuum for the seekers of deeper meaning could be served by DER SPIEGEL with its own online section or even a special magazine – working title: Meaning and Self.