Missing Link: Paperless in Berlin

On October 17, 2025, the last "tageszeitung" printed on paper, commonly known as taz, will be published. Only the weekend edition "Wochentaz" will still be delivered with correctly rustling paper. Anyone who wants to follow the taz's reporting during the week will have to rely on the web or an app that starts with a sampled rustling sound. The "Seitenwende", as the first paper farewell of a national German daily newspaper is called by editors and publishers, raises a number of questions and a memory.

Founded in 1978, the "tageszeitung" is the first national newspaper in Germany to take this step. It is modeled on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has only been published online since March 2009 after 149 years as a paper edition. The taz is visionary: "It is 2034, the democratic crisis of confidence and the continuing flood of fake news has given journalism an unexpected boost. Paywalls to monetize journalistic content have now become established on the websites of all media companies. All media companies? No. The taz has remained true to the principle of free access to journalism." Apart from the incorrect plural, the taz is to be congratulated on this optimistic idea. It is backed up by an equally optimistic view of readers in the near future: "More than ever, users are moving playfully between channels –, whether printed wochentaz, podcast, social media, taz AI or news app. Brave new world!"

"When are you going to stop reading newspapers?"

Let's playfully switch back to the year 2024. According to Statista, the taz had a paid circulation of 44,300 copies, of which 25,900 were delivered as an e-paper. Printing and distributing 18,400 copies of a daily newspaper is an expensive pleasure, especially in an operation that can hardly be cross-subsidized by other projects and is in the hands of a cooperative formed by readers. They voted on the future of taz at the cooperative's general meeting on September 14. Should we die in beauty or go through with digitization? 77 percent of the 800 or so comrades gathered voted in favour of digitization, 13 percent were against and 10 percent abstained. It speaks for the taz that one comrade's criticism of the decision was published with the news: "We hold cooperative shares so that a left-wing daily newspaper can be printed, and we pay high subscription fees so that we can get it. But the only signal is: when will you finally stop reading newspapers?"

In the contemplative pre-Christmas period, when "taz zahl ich!" became the slogan "Ihr Kinderlein leset!", criticism arose once again. The occasion was an article by a web editor of taz.de who, as a "young adult", wrote about the newspaper's course in the "tazlage" -- a print column: "I'm pleased that people still read print newspapers, even if I don't completely understand it." After all, the taz has a new, tidy website that recorded 10 million visitors in November 2024. On average, these visitors spent 136 seconds on the taz. The task of the "Young Adult" is to increase this dwell time by better teasing poorly performing titles. "The most common workflow when we notice such texts is to change the headline and the title and wait 30 minutes to see if the figures improve after the change: try, fail, learn." Of course, this doesn't work with a printed newspaper. The taz published the negative response of some readers under the headline Dear readers, everyone scroll over!

When the taz domain was to be seized

According to Adresso's quick consultation, the domain taz.de is worth 7,400-8,600 euros. If the taz can only be read online during the week, the value is likely to rise. In fact, it has been higher before. When the lawyer Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth got into a dispute with the taz and tried to sue for allegedly outstanding sums of money, he applied to the Tempelhof/Kreuzberg district court as the court of execution in July 2006 to seize and auction off the domain taz.de, for which he stated a value in dispute of 10,000 euros. Alternatively, the domain was to be auctioned on Ebay. The taz lawyer Jony Eisenberg immediately lodged an objection to this view, which was upheld. In any case, the entire process was actually irrelevant, as the taz had paid the requested amount of money on time.

This in turn was denied by the lawyer, who spoke to heise online in 2007 of an "unclear receipt of payment". The court took a different view at the decisive hearing: "Despite the clarifying letters from taz GmbH, he vehemently pursued his known false legal opinion because he wanted to auction off taz GmbH's Internet domain with all his might in order to harm taz GmbH economically." Von Gravenreuth also failed in the appeal proceedings in 2008, in which his law firm partner, the most important witness, also missed his flight to Berlin due to a faulty alarm clock. Von Gravenreuth did not serve the prison sentence imposed without probation.

For the future of taz, the story of the impending domain seizure is likely to be a marginal matter and just as forgotten as the long list of all domain names that the Munich lawyer wanted to seize at the time. It has disappeared, just like "He just didn't stop", an interview with taz lawyer Jony Eisenberg, in which he explains how von Gravenreuth flexibly adjusted the value of the domain downwards in order to minimize the damage caused by his feint. Perhaps it would have survived on paper, but even that is not always patient. In order to keep up with the flow of constantly circulating news, it is of little help, a tazler once said and then wrote as a farewell to paper: "As dear as it always was to me, it is now simply too expensive to use every day. Only toilet paper is actually irreplaceable."

(hos)