Covering both Hamburg and Berlin, let INMA take you on a deep-dive 2-day Study Tour of leading German newspaper publishers intersected with innovative startups. Learn European best practices to grow audience, revenue and brand from fast-changing European media companies Axel Springer, DPA, Funke, NOZ, Zeitonline, Hamburger Abendblatt and more. Go inside these German media companies and meet face-to-face with decision-makers and leaders.
INMA's German Media Study Tour will be lead by Pit Gottschalk. Pit today is Chief-Editor and Founder of Fever Pit'ch, a newsletter dedicated to football coverage. He previously worked for Axel Springer for 21 years heading up the CEO's office and as an editor and journalist for Sport Bild, Die Welt, and Welt am Sonntag. He later became an editor-in-chief for all sports coverage for Funke Media Group's titles. He is also a local to the city of Hamburg. Thus, he is the ideal Guide for this German Media Study Tour; with intimate knowledge of the German media industry as well as the companies and the cities we'll be visiting.
Meet in the lobby of the Empire Riverside Hotel for an 08:35 sharp departure.
Our Study Tour Guide, Pit Gottschalk, will give a brief introduction to the German media market and what to expect over the next 2 days.
Continuous development, highest journalistic standards and a thriving culture at work: The ZEIT publishing group with its flagship media DIE ZEIT and ZEIT ONLINE, numerous magazines and around 150 events per year is one of Germany's most important media houses. DIE ZEIT is Germany's leading opinion-forming weekly newspaper, not only an important source of up-to-date information, but rather also a medium of orientation. ZEIT ONLINE, the online sister brand of DIE ZEIT, is one of the fastest-growing providers of online journalism of the highest standard, award-winning storytelling and elaborate data-journalism. The focus of this visit lies on the innovative culture within the whole ZEIT Publishing Group.
Enrique Tarragona
Managing Director, Zeit Online
Enrique Tarragona
Nils von der Kall
Publishing Director Marketing & Circulation, Die Zeit
Nils
Katharina Kreienborg
Sales Manager
Laura Weinert
Consultant to the Editorial Office DIE ZEIT & ZEIT ONLINE
LinkedIn
Marco Kaiser
CTO, Zeit Online
LinkedIn
Lennart Schneider
Marketing Manager / Head of "Freunde der Zeit", Die Zeit
LinkedIn
A bunch of Funke Media Group executives participated in the INMA Media Viking Week in 2017. What followed was an internal project dubbed "The Oslo Project." Two years on, Funke is deep into a digital transformation and the reader revenue revolution that followed (the project is now re-named "Readers First" as per INMA's Readers First Initiative). Hear the story of what Funke Media Group learned from INMA members in Scandinavia and how they've given those lessons learned a specific German twist. The focus of this visit is on the digital subscription strategy for daily local paper Hamburger Abendblatt as well as their other news brand titles.
Dr. Ruth Betz
Leiterin Digitale Transformation, Funke
Dr. Ruth Betz
Berndt Röttger
Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Hamburger Abendblatt, Funke Media Group
@berndtroettgerBerndt Röttger
After the merger of NOZ MEDIEN and mh:n MEDIEN in 2016, the media group, now one of the ten largest newspapers publishers in Germany, decided to build a new central digital unit in Hamburg — somewhat the geographic middle between the existing headquarters in Osnabrück, Flensburg, Pinneberg and Schwerin. NOZ MEDIEN and mh:n MEDIEN publish 42 daily newspaper titles and very proud of having now more than 100.000 digital subscribers (More on that here).
Since 2018, three different teams work in a new office in Hamburg-Ottensen to support, strengthen and speed up the digital transformation at NOZ MEDIEN and mh:n MEDIEN. Hear the story of how the NOZ Digital manages the digital strategy of the publishing group and focusses on topics like Paid Content, Data Strategy and Business Development. Learn how the HH-Lab — a newly-founded R&D-department for the whole media group — does research and develops new ideas and (digital) products. And, last but not least, hear the story how the "Zentralredaktion Digital", the central unit for national and international digital content, focusses on digital journalism, storytelling and new formats to back-up and reinforce the paid content efforts in the local and regional editorial units.
Nicolas L. Fromm
Managing Director Digital, NOZ MEDIEN & mh:n MEDIEN
CEO, NOZ Digital
Nicolas
Joachim Dreykluft
Head of R&D, NOZ MEDIEN & mh:n MEDIEN,
Editor shz.de
Joachim
Michael Krechting
Managing Editor Digital Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung (NOZ)
@krechtingmMichael
The Next Media Accelerator was initiated by the German Press Agency (dpa) and founded in 2015 in Hamburg by several independent partners in order to offer media related startups a place to succeed. Under the motto "We are the premier hub for media innovation in Europe," the NMA funds and supports not just young entrepreneurs from Germany but from all over Europe. During this visit, you'll hear quick, 5-minute presentations from a variety of media startups currently setting up shop in Hamburg at the NMA, as well as an introduction to Next Media Accelerator and how they operate as a pan-European startup accelerator.
Christoph Hüning
Managing Partner, NMA
Christoph Hüning
Nico Lumma
Managing Partner, NMA
Nico Lumma
Recap of the day and group discussions over a well-deserved local beer.
Meet in lobby of the Empire Riverside Hotel for a 06:45 sharp departure.
Train departs from Gleis 4 at Dammtor Station.
First Class tickets booked and provided by INMA (part of your Study Tour registration).
A bus will take the group to our first Study Tour stop of the day.
The new central office — bridgehead of regional media in the capital and the republic. Journalistic excellence from the capital: The central editorial board of the Funke Mediengruppe started work in September 2015. The new unit supplies all regional media of the group with nationwide content, print and digital. Their location is in the middle of the capital — in "The Q" on Friedrichstrasse.
The team of the Zentralredaktion works seven days a week, from 5 in the morning to midnight, for the readers of the Funke titles.
FUNKE Digital is the hub for digital development of the group in Berlin. With 80 experts they develop the FD publishing platform, provide central digital services, run a "online only“ digital publishing unit and are responsible for all digital M&A activities.
Focus of the visits is FUNKE's dual strategy for digital publishing with two product lines: Quality portals with a paid content business model and "reach portals" with advertising business model.
Carsten Erdmann
Chief-Editor Digital, Funke Mediengruppe
Carsten Erdmann
Stephan Thurm
Head of Funke Digital and Chief digital Offficer, Funke Mediengruppe
Thurm
A short walk takes us to Axel Springer HQ, home to Bild and Die Welt.
Axel Springer is a German digital publishing house which is the largest in Europe, with numerous multimedia news brands, such as Bild, Die Welt, and Fakt and more than 15,000 employees. Get into the newsrooms of Bild and Die Welt and get a deepdive presentation in their digital transformation, as well as a sneakpreview of their new building.
Lars-Broder Keil
Head of Axel Springer Company Archive / History
Patrick Markowski
Chief Managing Editor, Bild
Oliver Michalsky
Editor-in-Chief, Die WELT Digital
Andreas Ludwigs
Head of Project "New Building"
A short walk, literally around the block, takes us to Deutsche Press-Agentur (DPA)
Vist the largest newsroom in Europe: 3000m3. Learn how the Deutsche Press-Argentur (DPA) is transforming its business model to work more closely with publishers towards driving digital subscriptions. DPA is at the forefront and taking a lead in the changing agency-publisher relationship dynamics. Learn how they are changing (and sometimes struggling with, like all of us) newsroom routines that need to learn to work with "performing data analytics." "Be first but be right first" is becoming increasingly hard in the age of fake news yet with a digital-savvy newsroom like DPA's, not impossible.
Katja Fleischmann
Director Performing Content, DPA
Sven Gösmann
Editor-in-Chief, DPA
The largest portal in Germany, owned by Ströer News Publishing, t-online.de has had its own newsroom since 2017 and is all advertising-based. Learn how t-online.de drives revenue in a "reader-revenue-focused publishing world" with a free, advertising-based news website.
Florian Harms
Chief-Editor, t-online.de
@faharmsFlorian Harms
First Class tickets booked and provided by INMA (part of your Study Tour registration).
Bus takes participants back to Empire Riverside Hotel
