Subject: Berlin Newspaper Struggles to Find New Voice 
Date: Published: 1/6/92 (60 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    International:
    Berlin Newspaper Struggles to Find
    New Voice After Being a Mouthpiece
    ----
    By Timothy Aeppel
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    BERLIN -- Life in the newsroom of Neues Deutschland used
 to be simple.
    As the flagship newspaper of East Germany's all-powerful
 Socialist Unity Party, Neues Deutschland for four decades
 printed the communist view of the world.
    There was a handy system to help the editors keep their
 news judgment sharp.  A label instructed when a story was to
 be printed without alteration, without delay -- the code
 meant the author, or censor, was the party's Central
 Committee.
    "You didn't need to think," says one editor, "just print."
    Those days are gone forever.  Even at the height of the
 Cold War, capitalism never threatened the newspaper as much
 as it does today.  Having lost 90% of its one million readers
 since the revolution of 1989, the paper now faces the
 quintessential challenge of the market economy:  compete or
 die.
    The paper, whose utopian name means "New Germany," has
 raised its newsstand price for the first time since 1946,
 shed two-thirds of its staff and closed 10 of 12 foreign
 bureaus, though one that remains isn't foreign anymore.  It's
 in Bonn.
    The paper is even accepting advertising from companies it
 once called "enemies of the working class."

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    Among the new realities they must face is stiff
 competition from both western German papers and feisty new
 eastern papers.  A newspaper war is raging on the streets of
 Berlin, as well as in other east German cities, which are
 still Neues Deutschland's main circulation targets.  Seven
 dailies are fighting for Berlin alone.  One splashy
 eastern-grown tabloid, "Super," has made its mark by accusing
 the west of colonizing the region and bringing in social
 problems, such as unemployment and AIDS.  
    The paper is doing things it wouldn't have dreamed of
 before, including issuing an appeal for donations.  The appeal
 has brought in 700,000 marks so far.  And even before formal
 unity, the paper began carrying advertising, including from
 such companies as Volkswagen and Fiat, which were eager to
 sell to the emerging market, regardless of party loyalties.
    "To survive, we'll take whatever we can get," says Mr. 
 Goetze, the managing editor.  "We won't take advertisements
 for sex shops, but that's about the only limit."

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