Berliner Zeitung
The Berliner Zeitung, founded in 1945, is an East German center-left daily newspaper based in Berlin. It is the only East German paper to achieve national prominence since unification. In 2003, the Berliner was Berlin's largest subscription newspaper—the weekend edition sells approximately 207,800 copies, with a readership as large as 468,000.
Its current editor-in-chief is Dr. Uwe Vorkoetter.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the paper was bought by Gruner + Jahr and the British publisher Robert Maxwell. Gruner + Jahr later became sole owners and relaunched it in 1997 with a completely new design. A stated goal was to turn the Berliner Zeitung into "Germany's Washington Post". The daily says its journalists come "from east and west", and it styles itself as a "young, modern and dynamic" paper for the whole of Germany.
Gruner + Jahr decided to leave the newspaper business and sold the Berliner Zeitung in 2002 to the publishing group Holtzbrinck. This sale was forbidden by the German authorities since Holtzbrinck already owned another major Berlin newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel. The Berliner Zeitung was then sold in the fall of 2005 for an estimated 150-180 million Euros to the British company Mecom and the American company Veronis Suhler Stevenson. The employees criticized this sale vehemently, fearing that journalistic quality could suffer as a result of excessive profit expectations by Mecom boss David Montgomery.
The Berliner Zeitung is the first German newspaper to fall under the control of foreign investors.
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