German Newspapers

German newspapers

With a population of over 80 million, it's not surprising that Germany offers a wide variety of quality newspapers.

Here the big names, in descending order of popularity (approximate circulation levels):

Quality dailies:

• Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) Half a million copies.
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) Just under half a million copies.
• Die Welt 300,000 copies.
• Frankfurter Rundschau (FR) 200,00 copies.
• Der Tagesspiegel 180,000 copies.
• Handelsblatt (financial newspaper) 180,000 copies.
• Financial Times Deutschland 130,000 copies.
• Die tageszeitung (taz) 80,000 copies.

Quality weekly:

• Die Zeit Around 650,000 copies. Appears on Thursdays. Hard to praise highly enough. Thoughtful articles and indepth analysis. The only paper we subscribe to at home.

Tabloid dailies:

These are your populist and more sensationalist daily papers, but just as The Sun, England’s most popular daily, is said to be written by the best journalists that Oxford and Cambridge can produce, an occasional dip into the Bild-Zeitung will give you some examples of a more colloquial use of German, and an insight into local prejudices!

• Bild Almost 4 million copies.
• Express 200,000 copies.

TIP!  Calling German translation students – I’ve noticed that many exam papers, especially for the Chartered Institute of Linguists Diploma in Translation, take  an extract from one of the German quality dailies such as Die Zeit, or the FAZ as their source text. So read your papers carefully and use them for practice translations!

Swiss newspapers

As a truly multilingual country, Switzerland boasts national newspapers published in German, Italian, and French. The following are the most popular German-language publications:

Quality dailies:

• Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) 330,000 copies, respected, liberal paper going back over 200 years.
• Tages-Anzeiger (Tagi, or TA) 550,000 copies, largest Swiss daily, left of centre.

Tabloid dailies:

• Blick Readership of around 750,000. Great if you're desperate to know what various European Royals are up to.

Austrian newspapers

With a population only 1/10th the size of Germany's, Austrian newspapers are unsurprisingly somewhat provincial compared to their German counterparts, but provide an in-depth view of what’s going on in Austria.

The weekly German newspaper Die Zeit issues an Austrian version, dedicating a few pages to Austrian news & articles which comment on the state of Austrian politics, often by Austrian journalists or popular figures.

These analyses often seem more insightful than the local Austrian coverage!

Quality dailies:

• Der Standard Liberal, online edition reportedly attracts over 1 million readers.
• Die Presse 350,000 copies, liberal and free-market.
• Wirtschaftsblatt 25,000 copies, Austria’s only financial daily.

Tabloid dailies:

• Kronen Zeitung (Die Krone) Around 3 million, Austria’s largest populist daily.
• Kurier 300,000 copies

German news in English

If you’re looking for news about Germany and German affairs in general,  then you might try the online news published by the German Missions in the United States, the official website of the German Embassy and 8 official German consulates in the USA.

Or try the webpage of Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle (German Wave) whose goal is to provide information about Germany and Europe to an international audience in 30 languages.

Viel Spaß beim Lesen!

PS: Prefer listening to the news in German? You could also try these German-language internet TV & radio stations.