Shortly after WW II ended (around 1948)....a magazine called 'Stern' started up out of Hamburg.
The best description of Stern would be a weekly magazine (kinda like Time/Newsweek) which was a bit left-of-center (they didn't mind admitting it), and they kinda admitted that they were something called 'Nutzwertiger Journalismus', which translates over to being 'useful journalism'.
What was meant by useful journalism? They claimed (from day one) that they were giving the reader enough information, details and insight....that the final belief or position of the reader was their own decision.
Yeah, I admit....it does sound a bit bogus, but this was the seventy years ago.
Over the decades, Stern often took positions that were opposite of the German government.
Course, in the early 1980s....they were the ones who fell for the fake Hitler diaries, and it pushed them into a joke for a while.
This past week, Stern announced that they were going 'radical', and they were going to say 'adios' to critical journalism. You might make the case that they were stepping back away from politics and trying to find a new edge to get readership back to what it was twenty years ago.
In the same way that both Time and Newsweek have lost readers and been close to shutting down....no one really goes to a once-a-week news magazine anymore.
Using the George Constanza-rule....if you are failing in life, it's time to do the opposite and find success that way. That's where I think Stern is headed....at least for a year or two.
How many magazines do they sell weekly? Last year, they were selling around 390k. If you look where they were around 20 years ago....they were selling one-million copies per week. So they are in a serious amount of financial pain.
If you were asking me if they'd be around in 2030? I'd probably suggest that they will end up merging with some other news magazine, and be a on-line publication only.
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