Sparschwein took on a new meaning in recent days as the German publication Der Spiegel announced drastic cuts in the English edition of its Spiegel Online publication. Personally, this is a great disappointment, because Spiegel is one of my two favorite German news brands, the other being Die Zeit.
Although I usually read Der Spiegel in the original German, I've followed the English edition for a few years, and except for occasional poor editorial choices tending toward over-literal translation, I've been pleased with the production. The shutdown of Spiegel's English edition follows similar failures for German news organizations Welt and Bild.
With the unwillingness to pursue the development of viable, international communication platforms, it seems that German business and society may be content to live with the restricting perspectives of reporting from the outside, which often lacks a real understanding of modern Germany and the fact that some time has passed since 1945. The Spiegel Online English edition was a good cultural ambassador, and I'm sorry to see its demise.
I did an interpreting job for a group of Russian online media entrepreneurs about a year ago. They visited Spiegel in Hamburg and were extremely interested to get an insight into Spiegel's development strategies, their vision of the future of online media, etc. They didn’t learn much. My impression is there wasn’t much to learn.
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