An eventful year comes to an end: the editor-in-chief’s weekly review

Good morning dear readers,

It was an eventful, moving year that is now behind us, also for us in the Handelsblatt editorial team. We had to deal with a war of aggression in Europe, with the ever-worsening conflict over Taiwan, with record inflation rates, the consequences of the climate crisis – but also with breakthroughs in the green conversion of the economy. But none of that should be the topic here today.

At the end of such a year that has probably pushed us all to the limit of our strength more than once, it is time to say thank you. Thank you, dear readers, for your loyalty, your feedback and the good and sometimes intensive exchange. You make our journalism possible by subscribing to or buying our newspaper at the kiosk: the 15,597 textswhich we released last year, the 10,482 infographics and the 15,375 minutes of podcasts.

And what is written in our texts is increasingly being picked up by others. According to the analysts from Mediatenor, the Handelsblatt was the first in 2022 the second most cited medium in Germanyright after “mirror” and before “image”.

To our particularly frequently used texts included research into the abolition of the Mercedes A-Class, the push by Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner to revise the TTIP trade agreement and research into the takeover of the Dortmund chip factory Elmos, which was ultimately prohibited by the federal government.

But our research into the hacker attack on the Dax group Continental also caused a stir, as did the revelations of the shaky system behind the real estate group Adler or the reports about the imploded payment processor Wirecard. A few months ago, our investigative team deciphered how the former Wirecard Asia board member Jan Marsalek once smuggled 315 million euros out of the company.

With such research, which in many cases are also legally tricky, things can get hectic shortly before the start of the press. This is why the last pages were late in the printers on 15 days of the past year. However, a newspaper always appeared – even if I didn’t really believe in it myself on some evenings.

In summer the Handelsblatt was voted business editor of the year by the trade journal “Wirtschaftsjournalist”, which of course pleases the 170 members of our editorial team.

More important to us, however, is the encouragement of our readers. That’s why we celebrated all the more that, for the first time, more than 100,000 pure digital subscribers have been using our offer for the first time in just a few days – and more intensively than ever before. At the same time, the Handelsblatt has expanded its reach and, according to AWA, has gained nine percent readers. We now reach 501,000 people with this.

Our subscribers Incidentally, they are not only particularly familiar with economic issues. They also get up earlier than other people. While non-paying readers tend to come to our website around seven o’clock, the intensive reading time of our subscribers starts at six o’clock.

Particularly common read the analyzes of our financial market specialists as well as the research and analyzes of our energy team, for which half a dozen editors now work. And they don’t just write texts, they also discuss their topics in the “Green & Energy” podcast.

However, the most listened-to podcast is a different one: it is the audio version of the “Handelsblatt Morning Briefing” newsletter with a total of 721,632 subscribers. For a few weeks now, the Morning Briefing has had a new team of authors, Christian Rickens and Teresa Stiens, after the esteemed Hans-Jürgen Jakobs wanted to spend his nights differently again after a little over 1000 issues.

Largely without night shifts we introduced a new layout this year and revised the structure of the newspaper – shortly before that we had already released a new version of the Handelsblatt app. A new layout for the website will follow in the next few months.

Of course you have to celebrate a year like this. At the Christmas party of the entire Handelsblatt Media Group in Düsseldorf, 700 liters of mulled wine were drunk. But don’t worry, after that none of us sat down at the computer, except for the colleagues on the night shift – and they work in our New York newsroom without any mulled wine.

I hope that you too will be able to celebrate a little in the next few days. In any case, I am looking forward to the exchange with you – also in the coming year!

sincerely
you
Sebastian Mathes
Editor-in-Chief of the Handelsblatt

You can receive the Morning Briefing plus free of charge as part of your Handelsblatt digital subscription or subscribe separately here.