Bo Sacks Speaks Out: Der Spiegel Did What Most of Us Only Talk About

Every so often, a media company does something so obvious, so sensible, and so long overdue that it doesn’t inspire applause; it inspires discomfort. Not curiosity. Not admiration. Discomfort.

In an INMA article by Paula Felps, “How Der Spiegel’s Crossmedia Unit rebuilt its newsroom for the future,” she describes how Der Spiegel did exactly that in April 2025. And it deserves far more than a passing slide at a conference panel or a courteous mention in an industry newsletter. It deserves attention. It deserves scrutiny. It deserves to be studied, closely.

While much of the media world is still locked in earnest strategy sessions debating whether to double down on video, expand podcasting, or “lean harder into social” (as if leaning were a business model), Der Spiegel stopped talking and changed how the place actually works.

They took about 60 people from their separate video, audio, and social teams and merged them into a single Crossmedia Unit. That alone is noteworthy. But let’s be clear: combining departments is not innovation. It is, at best, organizational feng shui. Companies have been rearranging org charts for decades and calling it transformation. That is not transformation. That is corporate furniture moving.

What made Der Spiegel’s move different, and smarter, was how they structured the new unit.

They didn’t organize it around platforms. They organized it around purpose. Around speed. Around the kind of storytelling being done. One group handles daily news coverage. Another focuses on long-form storytelling. A third concentrates on conversational formats. Each has its own tempo, its own editorial responsibility, and its own reason for being.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

This is the part magazine publishers, in particular, should be paying attention to. Der Spiegel grasped something many legacy organizations still resist: audio, video, and social are no longer side businesses living in different corners of the building. They are expressions of the same editorial mission. Different forms, same job.

The audience does not care which internal team “owns” a format. The audience cares whether the story reaches them in a way that feels timely, relevant, and worth their limited attention. Full stop.

That disconnect is where much of the magazine business has stumbled.

For years, we’ve bolted new platforms onto old structures and acted surprised when things didn’t magically improve. We launched Instagram feeds while keeping editorial planning locked to print cycles. We started podcasts and treated them like hobbies instead of products. We built YouTube channels that functioned as recycling bins for existing content and then stared blankly at the analytics when the numbers disappointed us.

We called all of this strategy.

It wasn’t strategy. It was patchwork.

And patchwork has a way of eventually tearing.

To be fair, some magazine brands have made real progress. Condé Nast has moved toward a more integrated, digital-first editorial model across titles like GQ, Vogue, Wired, and Condé Nast Traveller. National Geographic has spent years pulling digital, magazine, and short-form storytelling closer together, even making vertical video part of field reporting instead of a last-minute add-on. The Atlantic has treated podcasts as an extension of its editorial identity, not as an awkward cousin stored in the basement. Time has done serious work turning franchises like Person of the Year and Time 100 into multiplatform properties that travel well beyond the page.

Those are not cosmetic changes. Those are real moves.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Across much of the magazine industry, what passes for innovation still looks suspiciously like patchwork. We add a social editor here, hire a video producer there, launch a podcast because everyone else has one, and then wonder why the operation still feels fragmented. The answer isn’t mysterious. We are asking new channels to perform inside structures designed for another era.

Der Spiegel seems to have understood that the real obstacle wasn’t technology.

It was culture.

In the INMA article, Aleksandra Janevska says that one of the hardest parts of the restructuring wasn’t software, workflow, or production tools. It was convincing editorial teams, especially investigative journalists, to involve the crossmedia group early. Not after the story was written. Not after the package was locked. At the idea stage. At the moment when format can shape reporting instead of merely decorating it.

That’s where legacy organizations often choke.

Many editors still operate inside an unspoken hierarchy where the written story is the “real” journalism and everything else is adaptation. Video becomes promotion. Audio becomes repurposing. Social becomes marketing. The old prestige ladder remains firmly in place, even as audience behavior has already climbed down and walked away.

That mindset is a luxury the industry can no longer afford.

A strong story today may begin with reporting, but it may also begin with a format decision. Sometimes the best expression of an idea is a deeply reported print feature. Sometimes it’s a short-form video series. Sometimes it’s a podcast conversation that opens the door to deeper reporting later. The point is not to worship format. The point is to stop assuming one form automatically outranks the others.

And here’s another reason Der Spiegel deserves credit: they showed discipline.

They shut down their daily video podcast, Shortcut, after two years because the results didn’t justify the effort. That matters. Experimentation is important, but so is knowing when to stop. This industry has a bad habit of dragging underperforming initiatives around like family heirlooms. We get sentimental. We get hopeful. We call it patience when it’s often just indecision wearing a nicer jacket.

Sometimes the smartest move isn’t launching the new thing. Sometimes it’s killing the old thing that’s quietly draining time, money, and attention.

To me, what Der Spiegel has laid out isn’t some wild, futuristic reinvention. It’s basic editorial common sense applied to the world as it actually exists. Organize around storytelling purpose. Bring teams together early. Train people across disciplines. Match workflows to the speed of the work. Be honest about performance. Stop treating silos as sacred.

This shouldn’t sound revolutionary.

It should sound overdue.

For magazine brands, the question is no longer whether this kind of restructuring is relevant. Of course it is. The real question is whether leadership has the nerve to do more than bolt one more platform onto a crumbling framework. Younger audiences aren’t ignoring us out of spite. They’re responding to the fact that too many organizations still behave as if distribution, format, and audience habits haven’t fundamentally changed.

Der Spiegel stopped pretending.

They stopped debating.

They restructured.

The rest of us might want to put down the white paper, cancel one more “future of storytelling” panel, and ask the harder question: are we actually built for the future we keep talking about, or are we just decorating the past?