‘We Want to Take a Younger Perspective with SPIEGEL Start’
The magazine ‘SPIEGEL Start’ aims to prepare political and social topics for a young target group. This requires stamina and flexibility on the part of the journalists, says editorial director Sophia Schirmer. In return, they are given the opportunity to ‘do things a little differently’.
Werksgelände: What does an editorial manager actually do at ‘SPIEGEL Start’?
Sophia Schirmer: Quite a lot of different things. One of the main focuses of my work is of course content: I chair our themed conferences, work with the editors on text ideas, commission freelance authors, and edit the finished stories and coordinate their optimal playout with other departments in the company. Which text should be behind the paywall, which should be freely available and which should definitely be in the printed SPIEGEL edition? How can we strategically develop SPIEGEL Start? These are questions I ask myself every day. I also spend a lot of time on HR issues, casting new employees and looking at what the existing team members need. Over the past three years, I’ve learned that leadership primarily means talking.
What experience or talents should you have for the job?
Every working day here is different, so you have to be flexible. And you have to be curious about topics that perhaps don’t fit into the classic politics-economics theme. After all, we at ‚SPIEGEL Start’ want to do things a little differently, find different approaches and take a younger perspective. This also means that you need stamina: Sometimes the realisation of an idea doesn’t work the first time, and then you have to look for new ways to find protagonists or go through another editorial loop.
We've already tried out a lot at ‘Start’: a podcast, a printed magazine and a newsletter. I can't wait to see what we come up with next.
- Sophia Schirmer
What appeals to you about your job?
Journalism has become fast-moving; there is no longer one path that you can follow stoically for decades. Topics and user needs change too quickly for that. This is sometimes exhausting – but it also opens up enormous design possibilities. At ‘Start’, for example, we’ve already tried out a lot: a podcast, a printed magazine and a newsletter. I can’t wait to see what we come up with next.
What are the biggest challenges in your job?
At ‘SPIEGEL Start’, we want to reach a younger target group that has different needs and uses media differently than the ‘classic’, older SPIEGEL reader. We are often no longer part of the habits of this target group; reading or listening to us is not part of their everyday lives. Changing this is a challenge.
What has been your biggest flop on the job so far, and what have you learned from it?
If a story that is close to our hearts and that we have put a lot of work into doesn’t find the audience it deserves – that’s always a flop for me. Afterwards, I always resolve to think even more about the right way to play it out, to work even harder on the editing. And it doesn’t matter whether I wrote the story myself or ‘only’ edited it.
Sophia’s tips for the next generation
During the last internship of my career so far, a colleague said a wonderful sentence to me: ‘Journalists have to be annoying, even to each other if in doubt.’ Of course, you can overdo it, but basically, I think it doesn’t hurt to be a bit annoying. So, ask your colleagues in the internship for feedback on your stories, let them tell you who got which job and how. We can all learn a lot from each other – if we talk to each other.
Sophia Schirmer
… has been head of the SPIEGEL Start team since September 2020, a journalistic offering with which Spiegel is targeting the under-30s online audience. ‘SPIEGEL Start’ is the successor project to ‘Bento’, Spiegel’s previous youth brand.
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