Dusseldorf Hello dear readers,
a colleague from the Tagesspiegel described Annalena Baerbock as “this young lady” in the ZDF morning magazine this week. He correctly added that she is also Germany’s foreign minister, but by then it was too late: a storm was raging on social networks, saying the term “young lady” was sexist and extremely indicative of the attitude of older men towards successful women. The fact that the colleague later apologized for his wording via the moderator Dunja Hayali could no longer save the matter.
Now, I wouldn’t be happy if someone described me as a “young lady who is new to the editorship of the Handelsblatt” – even if it were factually correct. Fortunately, we don’t have to delve too deeply into the definition of “young” here, as I’m neither Secretary of State nor part of the Morning Magazine’s coverage. Nevertheless, I would like to add that my job title is “Head of Digital” and I am therefore responsible for all of the Handelsblatt’s digital channels, from the website and newsletter to podcasts and social media.
In the future, a Handelsblatt editorial team in the Metaverse would also fall within my area of responsibility. If you follow the vision of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in the future we should be able to do everything in that virtual world with virtual reality glasses that we are already doing in the “real” world today. In fact, most people there want to spend a lot of money on a house next to the property of US rapper Snoop Dogg instead of buying milk in the supermarket.
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Zuckerberg himself seems at least so keen on the idea that he renamed his company “Meta” in October 2021. The research of my colleague Larissa Holzki and colleagues Thomas Jahn and Stephan Scheuer for our Friday title, on the other hand, reads less convinced of this vision in the near future: There is currently a lack of computer capacity for a smooth implementation, Zuckerberg’s “Reality Labs” segment generated in the year 2021 a loss of around ten billion US dollars.
If you are still wondering what the metaverse could mean for the Handelsblatt: Our editorial on this topic gives you at least an impression of what our editor-in-chief Sebastian Matthes could look like there as an avatar.
“It will be many, many years before conference participants can meet on the holodeck of the Starship Enterprise.”
What else has kept us busy this week?
1. Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock visited the Ukrainian Donbass region last week – in this context, incidentally, the remark mentioned at the beginning about her as a “young lady” was also made. After her visit, she expressed extreme concern about the situation on the ground. Then, on Friday evening, the news came: Secret services consider a Russian attack on Ukraine to be possible in the coming days. The US government called on its citizens to leave Ukraine within the next 48 hours.
After a switching conference of the western allies on the Ukraine crisis, it was said on Friday that the situation was assessed by the participants from the European Union and NATO as “very, very serious”. They want to continue trying to persuade Russia to de-escalate with diplomatic efforts. “We must prevent a war in Europe,” wrote government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit on Twitter.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz had planned trips to Kiev and Moscow for the coming week, and US President Biden wants to speak to Putin on Saturday. Of course, you can also find the latest developments on the situation in Ukraine in our live blog.
2. This week was the ideal time for Europe 2022, the major conference on the future of Europe, organized by the Tagesspiegel, Zeit, Wirtschaftswoche and Handelsblatt. Economics Minister Robert Habeck was still negotiating with his French counterpart Bruno Le Maire on Monday about a sovereign European energy supply, but on Wednesday at Europe 2022 he already criticized France’s energy policy as “backward”.
At the conference, Le Maire again called for a multi-billion dollar program for young European technology companies and presented this on Tuesday afternoon in Paris together with Finance Minister Christian Lindner. And all this at a time when the EU is launching a 43 billion euro funding program for the European chip industry. Other guests at the conference were EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager and Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing.
3. Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) has already done some interesting pirouettes in recent years. With the corona pandemic, however, he has finally shown his – to put it positively – enormous adaptability. At the beginning he apparently wanted to be the toughest among the hardliners, with nightly curfews and bans on reading on park benches, but since last week maximum relaxation seems to be the order of the day. Suddenly, Söder no longer wants to implement the already agreed mandatory vaccination for employees in care facilities. SPD and Greens are appalled, at the same time the pressure on Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is increasing to present concrete relaxation plans in a timely manner.
4. That delivery delays are real for many products, became clear to most people last year at the latest by Christmas, when places under the Christmas tree had to remain empty. But what exactly is the problem often remains in the dark. I was all the happier this week about the play by my colleague Christoph Schlautmann, who illustrated the supply chain problem very clearly using an LED television. The device ended up arriving 41 days late.
5. My colleague Florian Kolf writes about an “almost unprecedented crash” about the shares of the Berlin ordering platform “Delivery Hero”. Some are already comparing the case with Wirecard. The stock had continued to lose value after a drastic sell-off of around 30 percent on Friday. The reason? After mixed forecasts, more and more investors are losing confidence in the food delivery service. Within less than a year, the price of 140 euros at the top has now melted down to a good 40 euros. The topic will certainly continue to accompany us in the coming week.
6. Plug-in hybrids, i.e. vehicles with both a combustion engine and an electric drive, were long considered all-rounders. If you charge regularly, you can drive fully electrically on short trips and use the combustion engine on long trips. However, a study by the “Center Automotive Research” available exclusively to the Handelsblatt last week showed that many of the vehicles manufactured today will no longer be eligible for subsidies in the future – there is a risk of an enormous drop in value.
7. While the new President of the Bundesbank, Joachim Nagel, last week urged that the ECB is reacting promptly to the high inflation, ECB boss Christine Lagarde said on Friday that she considers the debate about “green inflation” to be exaggerated.
This week my colleagues Jan Mallien and Frank Wiebe described why Lagarde’s complicated relationship with the public makes it difficult to understand her monetary policy.
8. A text from the competition caused lively discussions in our editorial office this week. The Financial Times wrote about the ex-Bild editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt that the Springer group was said to have been aware of the allegation of sexualized abuse of power before the investigation by the Freshfields law firm. It is also stated that Reichelt knew details from the report. I recommend the comment of my colleague Teresa Stiens on this. She writes: “The incidents at “Bild” are a wake-up call. It is precisely through their absurdity that they show what patriarchal chain reactions to sexualized abuse of power often still follow.
I’d love to hear your feedback on my first morning briefing [email protected]
Have a nice weekend,
your
Charlotte Haunhorst
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