The staff of Financial Times Deutschland appeared on the back page of the newspaper on Friday, in a deep bow. Below the photo was an apology, translated here from German:
Excuse us, dear company manager, that we burned through so many millions. Excuse us, dear advertiser, that we reported so critically on your company. Excuse us, dear company spokesman, that we did not often follow your proposed formulated texts. Excuse us, dear politician, that we did not always believe you. Excuse us, dear colleagues, that you had to work through so many nights and weekends. Excuse us, dear readers, that these are the last lines of the FTD. We are sorry. We beg your pardon unreservedly. However: If we could do it all over again—we would do it exactly the same again.
With these words, the FT Deutschland closed. The 12-year old newspaper launched at the height of an economic boom and crashed as the finances of so many of its readers collapsed.
With its last edition—in which they renamed the paper Final Time Deutschland and announced “finally in the black”—the 309 employees join what may well be an unprecedented number of journalists who have been laid off in Europe this year. The implosion of the newspaper industry, long a dreaded topic in the US, has finally hit the continent. The dailies are being knocked out by the one-two punch of an economic crisis now in its fourth year and readers’ attention being diverted to the digital realm.
“It’s a very, very, very tough time for journalists right now,” said Stephen Pearce, secretary general of the European Federation of Journalists. “Unless organizations invest in journalists, you can’t maintain the quality needed to keep readers engaged.”
In Germany, Frankfurter Rundschau, the second publication to receive a license after World War II, announced its insolvency earlier this month and is fervently searching for a white knight to rescue its 500 employees. The news agency dapd, too, declared bankruptcy this fall. In September, the Nuremburger Abendzeitung laid off 35 employees. The Berlin Verlag, publisher of two papers in the nation’s capital, laid off at least 40 workers. Scores of smaller, regional papers have quietly stopped hiring or offered voluntary leave packages.
The announcements prompted the nation’s Agency for Work to pronounce the wave the highest number of layoffs in the journalism branch since 1945.
As European Journalist Union president, Arne König, points out, the job loss is not limited to full-time staffers; when newspapers fold, freelancers, who often contribute a large amount of content, also lose major revenue sources.
The German layoffs have been headline news because Germany is considered economically the healthiest of all European nations. But ailing southern Mediterranean countries, like Greece, Portugal, and Spain, have been hit hard as well. No firm statistics exist, but anecdotally, journalists say it has been one of the worst years in memory.
“Grosse Kaka,” (It’s crap) is how one laid off FTD journalist put it.
Spain’s flagship paper, El Pais, said in October that it was laying off nearly one-third of its staff, or 464 people. Pearce, of the journalists’ union, said it was impossible to gather accurate numbers, but that the high-profile trimming follows years of smaller, quiet layoffs and media companies simply not replacing staff that have left.
Anecdotally, Ireland’s regional papers have been hard hit; Greek papers, too, have been hurt. And Portugal has been hit particularly hard this year, said Francine Cunningham, executive director of the European Newspaper Publishers Association (ENPA).
Circulation in Europe has fallen about 5.5 percent since 2008, when economies there began to unwind. Hungary, Poland, Italy, Spain, and Greece, however, were struck particularly hard. Circulation in these countries dropped 10 percent between 2008 and 2010, according to ENPA statistics.
True, home circulation has never been as important in many European markets as it was in the US. European readers tend to pick up a paper to read on the tram during the morning commute. But hard times mean that once-loyal readers may skip buying the local broadsheet to economize, or they may opt for a free paper.
(“It’s very cultural,” Cunningham explained. Scandinavians, on the other hand, prefer home delivery.)
To be honest, the European newspapers have made a series of shockingly poor decisions. Or, more to the point, they have refused to make decisions. They have, almost to a news outlet, shut their eyes and hoped the internet would go away.
They all had an advantage that the English speaking papers didn't have - a captive audience, because of the language barrier. The Europeans have also been much later adopters of digital than in other countries, and a significant portion of the German population is still not particularly engaged with it. The Europeans, and the Germans in particular, could have seen what was happening in the English sphere and taken the necessary action - a simple solution would have been to stop classifieds bleeding by creating their own online classified sites. They've had years to do this.
I work in the media in Germany and it is five to ten years behind its counterparts in the UK. Digital knowledge is woeful and management is dealing with the threat by sticking their fingers in their ears and going 'la la la'. Look at top newspaper websites - they haven't been upgraded since they were built. Even Der Spiegel, Germany's flagship publication, has an old fashioned, cheaply built site that hasn't evolved since I first looked at it in 2003.
They are very much victims of their own complacency, as much as of reader migration to digital.
#1 Posted by Alexie, CJR on Thu 13 Dec 2012 at 08:48 AM