Germany seems like it should be a reasonably peaceful place. But when you work at a tabloid, you read about all sorts of unpleasant things.
A few days ago a guy allegedly murdered the mother of his baby and her parents with a sword. Last week an old man shot and killed three people. Some people found a murdered woman in a barrel the other day. Earlier this week a guy was sentenced to 10 years, 9 months in prison for something awful enough that I don’t really want to tell you about it.
So the U.S. doesn’t have the market entirely cornered on heinous violence.
In other news, this week is British Week on the cover of Bild – all the naked ladies are from the UK. Well, I say naked ladies, but they’re really only mostly naked. They always have a bikini bottom or something. And I learned an important vocabulary word: “Oben-ohne-Models.” It translates quite directly: topless models.
It’s a winning combination, crime and nudity. Also, celebrity news. I’ve even heard of some of the celebrities. Zac Efron, of all people, was on the last page of yesterday’s paper, as were Ginger Spice, Leonardo diCaprio, and “Prinz Andrew & Fergie.” But the lead story on the front page this morning was about…some German celebrity being pregnant with the baby of some other German celebrity.
To sum up: I’m actually really enjoying my little stint at the tabloid and still have my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to write a story for them before moving on to my other placement next week.
At last! Today I started work at Bild-Zeitung, far and away the highest-circulation newspaper in Germany. It sells on the order of 4 million copies a day. USA Today, the top U.S. paper, has a little over 2 million circulation. And there are only a quarter as many people in Germany. So, we’re talking about a very influential newspaper. Oh yes – and it’s a tabloid.
If you go look at Bild’s website, you don’t need to speak German to notice something about it: lots of sex and violence. The print edition has a naked lady on the front page every day. There may also be more naked ladies on the inside of the newspaper – you never know what naked lady news may have broken in the last 24 hours – but you’re definitely guaranteed one on the front page. I think more U.S. publications should consider adding this feature, because it clearly sells papers.
I only went in for a few hours this afternoon, so I can only report that the people are really nice and there’s bottled water for all in the printer room:
It’s sparkly water, of course.
Alan Mairson, a writer who left National Geographic at the same time as me, has big ideas on how to do something about the Society’s problems. (Maybe also society’s problems, but he’s mostly talking about the Society for now.)
The idea is to use his new website, Society Matters, to unite people to do things like “crowdsourcing” and “beatblogging” – the internet is a bottomless well of new words – and come up with a way for the National Geographic Society to get its act together and find a way forward in this era of aging subscribers and plummetting ad revenue.
To which I say, Awriiight! Go Alan! I’ll be following along for sure. Because, really, it’s a pretty cool Society when you think about it. They fund research on underwater archaeology and mongoose diseases, for goodness’ sake.
