‘A full-on embrace’: how the EU’s largest news publisher fell in love with the US
After recent purchase of UK’s Daily Telegraph, Axel Springer and its ‘guru-like’ CEO, Mathias Döpfner, have sights on transatlantic expansion
In Mathias Döpfner’s 2023 book Dealing with Dictators, the chief executive of the German media company Axel Springer SE proposed a fix for western democracy: states that respect the rule of law should stick together and prioritise trading with each other. Better that, he declared, than indulging the illusion that doing business will tame “self-styled strongman leaders”.
So it came as quite the surprise when last month Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, was given a prominent opinion article in Welt am Sonntag, less than four weeks before the riskiest elections of the rightwing populist’s career. “It caused a lot of strong irritation,” said a former editor at the Springer-owned broadsheet.
Related Knowledge Center: State of the business model
The traditional journalism business model has long since collapsed, and news organizations have shrunk or disappeared entirely. While a number of promising experiments are under way, the public has not shown a willingness to buy what news organizations are selling.