Germany’s widest-read newsmagazine, Focus (think Economist, but guest-edited by the Private Eye team, plus a bit of Stuff thrown in), celebrated its 15th birthday this week with an impressive bumper section — not available online, unfortunately — on the development of the glossy weekly.
One of the special features was an interesting sweep through the history of scoops produced by the magazine (not available online), which included the first report of the 2005 Volkswagen scandal, when VW money was spent on prostitutes and favours for members of the company’s worker’s council.
Shortly after the Erfurt massacre of 2002, when 16 people were killed when a pupil went on the rampage with a gun inside his secondary school, it broke details about the actions of one heroic teacher who locked the gunman in Room 111 to prevent further chaos (not available online).
In the same year it revealed that one of Germany’s regional prime ministers was moving to Berlin to be a big-shot in Gerhard Schröder’s federal government as minister for the economy and jobs. (Sounds dull, I know, but imagine if Gordon Brown decided to appoint Ken Livingstone as Chancellor).
What’s so special about this? Well simply the fact that these were all broken in a weekly magazine, not in the daily press. Der Spiegel , Focus’ rival, also has an impressive reputation as a ‘scooper’. Compare this with the German newspapers, which, you’ll know by now, are largely unoriginal and on the dull side. Unlike in Britain, the news force is in the glossies, not the papers.
So if you’re ever in Germany and want proper news, not just re-writes of press agency stories, buy Focus. It really is good.
But it has one slight fault. As if you hadn't gathered it yet, the website’s pretty stingy.
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