The newspaper Bild has long poured vitriol on the country’s left-wingers and ‘do gooders’. But now it has a new target: the chancellor. By Thomas Meaney
‘It would be ideal if you could hit a deer,” Julian Reichelt, editor-in-chief of Europe’s largest tabloid, Bild Zeitung, told his chauffeur. “Guardian readers could do with a bit more colour.” We had reached escape velocity out of ice-encrusted Düsseldorf. The Mercedes S-Class locked into place like a bobsled on the Autobahn. I sat shotgun with Reichelt’s assortment of sports gear, a hockey stick between my legs. “We are lucky in our driver today,” Reichelt said, deadpan. “Last time we hit a wild boar and the boar and the car went flying.”
I was travelling with Reichelt on one of his publicity tours across Germany. For the past two years, he has made an appointment once a month to commune with groups of Bild’s 1.3 million readers. “You have to feel their emotions,” he told me from the backseat. “You have to listen to their hearts.”
Continue reading…The newspaper Bild has long poured vitriol on the country’s left-wingers and ‘do gooders’. But now it has a new target: the chancellor. By Thomas Meaney‘It would be ideal if you could hit a deer,” Julian Reichelt, editor-in-chief of Europe’s largest tabloid, Bild Zeitung, told his chauffeur. “Guardian readers could do with a bit more colour.” We had reached escape velocity out of ice-encrusted Düsseldorf. The Mercedes S-Class locked into place like a bobsled on the Autobahn. I sat shotgun with Reichelt’s assortment of sports gear, a hockey stick between my legs. “We are lucky in our driver today,” Reichelt said, deadpan. “Last time we hit a wild boar and the boar and the car went flying.”I was travelling with Reichelt on one of his publicity tours across Germany. For the past two years, he has made an appointment once a month to commune with groups of Bild’s 1.3 million readers. “You have to feel their emotions,” he told me from the backseat. “You have to listen to their hearts.” Continue reading…