For the current reporting is at the Süddeutsche Zeitung the news chief in charge. Like so many titles, the head of news is misleading: news doesn’t have a boss. They are untameable like the wind or the sea. If someone said they were the chief of the wind, they would be prescribed medication. In some countries, let’s say in Russia or China, the heads of state believe that they are also the heads of the news. This works until the bosses are overthrown, extradited or otherwise recalled and in this respect become news themselves.
Elsewhere, in Germany for example, the news do as they please, they come and go as they please. Seen in this way, the news boss of the SZ editorial team is more the main driver of the news: in the late afternoon, for example, he thinks he has finished work because everything that is current is on the homepage, in the digital edition and in the printed newspaper.
Then Maradona dies, or the Queen, or the port of Beirut blows up and the news chief starts all over again: Are the reports correct? Who is writing the message? Are there pictures or videos? Who can be at the scene of the event and do research as quickly as possible?
News is a perpetual stream of turbulence, with no beginning or end. After all, reporting used to have a beginning and an end: when the newspaper was only available on paper, the editors could send the last changes to the printers around 11 p.m., and then it was over by the afternoon of the next day. If the pope had died at 11:01 p.m., the first parts of the readership would have been informed at the earliest 19 hours later, which would have done neither the readership nor the pope justice, unless one had already known the successor due to the enormous amount of time that had passed.
12:00 a.m
Today, the question of when work begins can no longer be answered because the work always goes on. Since the beginning of the digital age a quarter of a century ago, SZ reporting has had neither a beginning nor an end. At midnight, when a new day begins, an SZ editor known as a “night pilot” sits in front of a screen and watches world events. If the US federal police search Donald Trump’s property overnight or if stock prices in Asia plummet, the night pilot will write a message so that SZ readers can find out when they look at their smartphones early in the morning.
Because it would be unhealthy to work through the night in the long run, the night pilot is based on the west coast of the USA with the advantage of a nine-hour time difference to Europe. When people in Munich or Berlin wake up, it’s still late in the evening for him, which is why, strictly speaking, he’s not a night pilot at all, but flies into the sunset.
In Munich, on the other hand, the first shift begins at 4:30 a.m., when the “SZ am Morgen” newsletter is produced, and sometimes the first shift begins even earlier if the situation requires it. In November 2020, I drove to the office at half past three because we were expecting the first results of the US presidential election and wanted to inform the readers early in the morning whether they would have to endure Trump for another four years. In the office, however, it turned out that the internet had failed overnight, which is why I drove home on the empty Mittlerer Ring. The voice on the car radio said that there was no clear trend in the US election. As I said – news has no boss.
7 o’clock
When the night pilot goes to bed, we plan the new day at the news desk (that’s what we call the news center). First we take a critical look at our homepage. Does it include everything that has just happened? Do the esteemed competitors of the Frankfurt general something we are missing? Are the most relevant topics at the top?
Like people, news has a hierarchy: there are the important ones, the less important ones, and the less important ones who think they are important. So in the editorial office we always ask ourselves how important we consider certain events to be and what we then “do” with them. So what do we do with Scholz calling Putin (important), or with the new security concept for the Wiesn (medium important) or with Harry and Meghan being given bread when they visit Düsseldorf (pseudo-important). In this way, the confusion of topicality is constantly being re-evaluated and measured: is it new? Is it relevant? Is it exclusive? Night pilots and news crews may be exposed to the winds, but they don’t fly aimlessly. There are landmarks on the radar screen.
Overall, world and news events seem to have become more turbulent. At the beginning of the millennium, German politics grappled with issues such as can deposits and dentures for weeks, even months. One would be grateful for such, then so-called hot topics, today, since ever larger crises alternate more and more often. In the past two years alone, there has been Trump’s attempted coup and the storming of the Capitol, the “flood of the century” in Germany, the overthrow in Afghanistan, the attack on Ukraine, and Putin’s nuclear threats. Germany is said to be largely still ahead of the energy and economic crisis. And on top of that the Corona crisis, which was once considered the worst since the Second World War, but has passed this title on again. Unfortunately, there is much on this list that is likely to accompany the world for a long time – political extremism, pandemics, climate crisis.
12 o’clock
When we plan for lunch, we imagine that readers go on their lunch break and want to know what happened in the morning and what that means for them by looking at their SZ app. And maybe they would like to discuss the news of the day with fellow students or colleagues in the canteen. So for lunchtime, we’re planning fresh news and classifications, as well as a commentary that we informally call “lunchtime opinion.” Alone: How are you supposed to know early in the morning what the readership will be interested in later?
It has always been the case in editorial offices that many editors thought they knew what “people” outside were interested in. Today, however, news bosses and their teams are no longer dependent on assumptions, because it is now possible to measure exactly which articles are read and how – this is a strong indication of where there is a need for clarification and classification. In addition to tough politics, these can also be very realistic questions (which corona rules apply now?) or what can be expected from the return of Robert Lewandowski in the FC Barcelona jersey.
The figures show that readers have different needs depending on the time of day. When you wake up in the morning, you want to know briefly and concisely what happened during the night and what is to come during the day. As the day progresses, the need for classification and analysis grows. And in the evening, articles are in demand that offer profound reading pleasure and relaxation. The criteria for a good story – new, relevant, vivid – have been enriched by one thing: it is important that every story appears at the right time.
Conversely, there are times when some stories should not appear. One morning we prominently published a story about male health on the homepage, which was well researched but felt like a urology seminar. That wasn’t such a good idea, as a number of reactions showed. There are certain worlds of ideas and concepts that you don’t want to be kidnapped into in the morning, especially not before your first cup of coffee.
17 o’clock
5 p.m. used to be the time when day-to-day business at SZ largely ended. At 5 p.m. the editor-in-chief came to the news boss and asked him to show him the front page. Then he grumbled that he found this topic weird or that headline incomprehensible. This rumbling was, so to speak, the acoustic announcement of the approaching end of the day. Today between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. we are not only advising on the front page, but also on how to proceed, because unlike in the Nord Stream tube, the news business is always going on: Does someone write in the evening about the Corona crisis round between Chancellor and Prime Minister? Do we send SZ app users a link to the exciting report from Ukraine? Shall we explain early next morning what to expect from the car summit?
But the head of news is still happiest when he has a piece of news to offer himself, i.e. an exclusive story. An editorial team can depict and classify world events and react to them in this respect, but they can and should also tell the readership something new with exclusive stories. You can force the public prosecutor’s office to react by revealing fraud with corona tests, you can trigger a political debate by conducting an interview with Markus Söder, who casually calls for fracking in Lower Saxony. And she can show the truth behind the facade, for example by revealing the wild west methods of the taxi alternative Uber. On a good day, an editorial team is not only driven by the topicality, but also contributes to the topicality itself.
12:00 a.m
At midnight, the night pilot, who sits in front of his screen in America, takes over again. He steers the homepage through the night and is a symbol for news editors all over the world: it is never quite clear which topics you will skim over and how severe the turbulence will be. But as long as the compass is good and the flow of news doesn’t break off under the wings, nothing can actually go wrong.