To have been at the helm of a company that is highly regarded by the public for almost 20 years is a great achievement in itself. As CEO of the Axel Springer media company, Mathias Döpfner has weathered a number of storms. He did a lot of things right, but also some things wrong.
In such a long term of office, however, the circle of yes-men, katzbucklers and adepts inevitably grows larger and larger. If, as was the case after Springer’s delisting from the stock exchange, the salutary corrective of critical shareholders no longer applies, the risk of hubris and thus of miscalculations increases.
This explains the company’s recent affairs around its somewhat battered flagship “Bild” – all these permanent, uncorrected unsavory appetites in the management style of the editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt, who was killed far too late. For years he was able to maintain a system of fear and submission, in which editors were available as sexual partners according to taste, against career promises and sometimes special payments.
The mood in the tabloid, which Döpfner was always close to, evidently resembled a slippery party in the officers’ mess. The usual media machismo of earlier years seemed to be trapped here in a time reserve. In Springer’s world, the musicologist with a doctorate in the CEO’s office was responsible for the fine things, while the ex-war reporter in the “Bild” editor-in-chief was responsible for the rough stuff – the Schöngeist and his shooter.
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Springer’s bedroom of power
The revelation of these conditions by the “New York Times” plunged Döpfner into the deepest crisis since the unsuccessful entry into the postal services market (“PIN”) in 2007. The recently completed takeover of the promising US Internet portal “Politico” threatens to be overshadowed in the national and international press by keyhole views into the bedrooms of power at Springer.
It also exacerbates the fact that the Springer chairman is in the process of making the problem worse with clumsy appearances. The more unsuccessful crisis communication, the bigger, deeper and longer crises become.
In the Reichelt case, Döpfner did not opt for a press conference or a lengthy conversation with an external medium. No, the CEO just quickly made a rather unfavorable video for the workforce in which he explained the wagon castle to the current architecture of the house, so to speak.
Conspiracy theories instead of excuses
Instead of an apology for all those women who had also described their distress in dealing with Reichelt in an internal investigation, he gave a conspiracy theory via the sources of the “New York Times” by himself. In the background, men “who clearly organized the procedure” and wanted to overthrow Reichelt, said Döpfner.
It was “a very threatening, sometimes almost extortionate tone”. The fact that Springer is now supposed to be a victim turns the story of power, sex and lies completely upside down.
It is also astonishing with what verve Axel Springer is currently fighting legally against possible whistleblowers and informants in the Reichelt case. And finally it is astonishing how Döpfner, once editor-in-chief of the tabloid “Hamburger Morgenpost” and “Welt”, classifies the revealed content of a private text message to long-time in-house author Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre as virtually unquotable.
In it, he praised Reichelt regarding the corona phase as “really the last and only journalist in Germany who still bravely rebelled against the new GDR authoritarian state”; almost everyone else has become “propaganda assistants”. Even if that was ironic, perhaps part of an internal intrigue, it suggests Döpfner’s thinking.
Döpfner should resign as the publisher’s boss
He has always seen himself as a “radical of the middle” – by the way, he agrees with “Bild”, which lives from indiscretions of all kinds, also from SMS in the manner of the GDR comparison. Trying to block the media’s access to sources just because the content doesn’t fit into their own stuff shows a strange understanding of freedom of the press.
As CEO of Axel Springer, the long-term CEO Döpfner, who himself holds 22 percent of the shares, currently appears safe despite all the maddening. The publisher’s widow Friede Springer and the 45 percent co-partner KKR from the cosmos of private equity need him, albeit for different reasons.
A completely different question is how suitable Döpfner is as President of the Association of German Newspaper Publishers. In the crisis PR for the Reichelt affair, he disqualified himself here. As a role model for an industry that strives for honesty, he is rather poor. His video is rock bottom and anyone can watch it.
More: The Reichelt case is far from over for Döpfner