Freiburg

Zakaria Alhassan reports about his first day at work at his new work place, Badische Zeitung.

It was on a nippy Tuesday Morning, the First of December and my first day at my new work place, Badische Zeitung, where I was cordially welcomed into the editorial office of the daily newspaper. It was all pleasant smiles and exchange of warm handshakes as I encountered the staff one after the other..

I was later invited to the morning editorial conference where the editorial team discussed the events to be covered for the day. Never mind that I did not understand a word of the German language. My colleague and partner Julia Littmann who had earlier worked with me at the Daily Graphic editorial office in the Northern Regional capital, Tamale, Ghana, was on hand to do some few translations of what transpired at the conference.

I was subsequently ushered into a homely office where I will be working for the next four weeks as part of a Journalists exchange programme dubbed, “Nahaufnahme-Close-Up.” It is organized by the Goethe-Institute, a German cultural institution that promotes the study of the German language abroad and also encourages international cultural exchange and relations.

Located in the Central Business District of the historic city of Freiburg, the Badische Zeitung publishes 150,000 daily copies that include supplements on travel, sports, culture and entertainment among other topics. It also publishes magazines and weekend papers that largely contain adverts, announcement and vacancies. Happenings in nearby towns are also reflected in the paper on regular pages to serve the interest of the people at those localities. The paper is also heavily patronised online 24 hours. For instance more than 30 million readers visited the Badische Zeitung site in November this year.

The locally published newspapers are distributed to various parts of the Freiburg region of over 200,000 people by its 1,700 vendors. And latter’s by 6am, subscribers have their papers served them. And if there is any unsold at all, it is recycled.

According to the affable Chief Editor of the paper, Uwe Mauch, the Badische Zeitung was first published in 1946. I was presented with a copy of the 8-page black and white edition of the first publication. Now the paper is beautifully designed in colourful copies of several pages depending on the quantity of news and adverts available on a particular given day to reflect the modern trends of newspaper publication.

It currently has 45 journalists on its payroll with 15 of them resident in Germany while the rest are out and about in other parts of the world. It also sources news from other agencies and freelance correspondents around the globe.

In describing the nature of their modern printing press, Mr. Mauch, who has worked with the paper for the past 10 years, proudly declared, “we have a state of the art machine that is currently one of the best in the world.” He revealed that the machine is capable of producing more than 35,000 papers and about four (4) million pages per hour.

The Germany made Cortina Machine was purchased by the company at 25 Million Euros. The Chief Editor further indicated that the ecological friendly machine does not use water and chemical neither doest it emit carbon. At the moment, all is set and the paper is ready to go to bed. Do not miss your copy of tomorrow’s edition of the Badische Zeitung.