At Springer-Verlag, the employees were told on Monday what the hundred-million-euro austerity course that CEO Mathias Döpfner has decreed in particular for the newspapers “Bild” and “Welt” means. A three-digit number of jobs will be lost in the editorial department of “Bild”, the number of regional editions will fall from eighteen to twelve, smaller locations will be closed entirely, and the management level will be thinned out. Artificial intelligence is used for numerous tasks in the editorial office. From January 1, 2024, the strategy “digital only” or “first digital, then print” will apply to the Springer Group.
Operational redundancies “avoid as far as possible”
Michael Hanfeld
responsible editor for feuilleton online and “media”.
The number of terminations is in the “low” three-digit range, according to company circles. “Low” can mean: 200 employees have to go. Efforts are being made to “avoid redundancies and to find socially acceptable solutions,” according to an email sent by the “Bild” editors-in-chief Marion Horn and Robert Schneider, the head of the “Bild” group, Claudius Senst, and the “Bild” managing director Christoph Eck-Schmidt, have signed.
The fact that the use of AI is no longer discussed at Springer, but actually implemented, is made clear by the passage in the email, which states that one must “unfortunately also part ways with colleagues who have tasks that are carried out in the digital world by AI and/or processes are replaced or do not find themselves in this new lineup with their current capabilities”. Who is no longer needed is no longer a secret: “The functions of editor-in-chief, editors, proofreaders, secretaries and photo editors will no longer exist as they do today.” Of course, according to Springer, that is not the use of KI, but rather due to changes in work processes that are independent of it.
Regional editions are eliminated
The regional editions of “Bild” in Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz will be dropped and merged into a Saxony edition. The Düsseldorf and Cologne locations merge to form “Bild Rheinland”, in Hamburg the tabloid edition of “Bild” no longer appears. In all editions, the regional reporting is reduced to one local page and one sports page.
CEO Döpfner had already announced such a radical restructuring at the end of February, causing massive uncertainty among the employees of the core brands “Bild” and “Welt”. Döpfner dismissed the “Bild” editor-in-chief Johannes Boie without warning, and the “Bild am Sonntag” boss Alexandra Würzbach and Claus Strunz, who was responsible for “Bild live”, had to go with Boie. Marion Horn took over the editorial conference on the day of her dismissal.
100 million euros in savings
“In order to remain economically successful in the future, our earnings in the German media business must improve by around 100 million euros over the next three years. Through increases in sales, but also through cost reductions,” Döpfner announced. There should be savings of 100 million euros, “because sales, profits and costs are developing in such a way that we would get into a dangerous situation with ‘Bild’ and ‘Welt’ in a few years if we do nothing.” Sales and profits are ” not everything. But without turnover and profit everything is nothing. The freedom to do independent and critical journalism depends on economic success.” Döpfner declared paper journalism to be over. it is about the third stage of “digital only”. That doesn’t just mean saying goodbye to print. But a fundamentally new understanding of quality journalism in the digital age.”
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Springer invests in digital projects and in the USA; for example in the publication “Politico”, which is Döpfner’s plan, and that corresponds to the ideas of the financial investors KKR, which hold 35.6 percent of the shares in Springer. The circulation of the “Bild” newspaper, as with all printed daily press, has steadily decreased in recent years. At the end of 2022, if you count the Berlin tabloid “BZ”, the sold circulation was 1.1 million copies.
The German Association of Journalists (DJV) sharply criticized Springer’s plans shortly before the figures became known. The group should refrain from the planned job cuts. “If Mathias Döpfner wants to slaughter the group’s dairy cow, that’s not just anti-social towards the employees, it’s also extremely stupid economically,” said DJV national chairman Frank Überall. “Image” is still Springer’s profit maker. “Less regional reporting means less reader service and therefore fewer readers,” says Überall.
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