HAMBURG (dpa) – A metre-long board has been pinned to the wall of the office of Stefan Aust on the 11th floor of the Hamburg offices of Der Spiegel news magazine.
The chief editor has meticulously placed miniature front covers of the magazine on it to show the rising sales curve of the weekly magazine.
Right at the top is a photograph of the World Trade Center: one of the twin towers is on fire; a passenger plane is heading for the second.
The Spiegel sold 1.4 million copies of this edition with its coverage of the September 11 terror attack in New York. A record for the magazine, beating the previous best of 1.3 million during the Gulf War.
Sales in the last quarter of 2001 were so good that the magazine has, for the first time, overtaken its old rival Stern.
Its average of 1.106 million was an increase of 9.5 per cent over the same period the previous year. At the same time Stern improved by 0.4 per cent to 1.085 million.
Focus, another rival in the news magazine sector, meanwhile slipped 0.4 per cent to 731,000.
“September 11 was a boost for us,” said Aust. “In exciting times you produce exciting editions.”
The terror attack was an opportunity for Der Spiegel to throw its considerable investigative weight into the fray.
Its huge pool of reporters was able to uncover exclusive material about plane hijacker Mohammed Atta’s terrorist cell in Hamburg. It also despatched a dozen journalists to the United States to reconstruct the events of September 11.
Aust explains with pride that the series of articles on September 11 will appear in book form in Germany later this month and will be published in the United States in the summer.
Aust, 55, has been editor of the magazine since the end of 1994. Publisher Rudolf Augstein had insisted on his appointment in the face of considerable editorial resistance.
At that time Focus was launched by the publishers Burda as a rival, immediately chalking up successes with its practical, reader-friendly articles.
Aust ordered colour pages and higher quality paper, but says he rules out trying to compete with “tit-bit journalism”.
“If we tried to conform we would only lose out,” he said.
Despite the success of Focus, Der Spiegel has managed to keep circulation steady at just over 1 million for the last 10 years.
However the changes in Germany’s media scene since the rapid spread of commercial television and a huge acceleration of information has affected the magazine.
Spiegel, renowned for its investigative journalism, faces huge competition now, especially from the large regional daily newspapers who have invested much on in-depth news gathering. Aust says this hit home recently in coverage of the conservative CDU political donations affair.
Spiegel has reacted by expanding both its online editorial desk, which deals with day-to-day news, and the investigative features desk which was given more journalists after the monthly magazine Spiegel Reporter was discontinued last March.
Aust rejects the suggestion that the magazine’s influence has waned as a result of the tougher competition.
“Under the red-green coalition (of Social Democrats and Greens) we have even a greater influence on politics than in the previous years,” he said.
After last year’s successes – with subscriptions up 9 per cent to 360,000 – modesty is now the order of the day.
Aust says it won’t be possible to maintain the present high circulation figures. Recessionary times are beginning to affect the magazine which lost 17 per cent of its advertising earnings last year compared to income in 2000, a boom year.
There are, however, no plans for cutbacks on the editorial desk.
“The publishers realize that it serves no purpose to save on production,” Aust said.
