Quality journalism isn’t a relic. It’s the future. And the future is being built right now.

A few weeks ago, DIE ZEIT launched a tool that allowed people to search millions of historical records from the Nazi era, making it possible, for the first time, for many to trace their own family history with just a few clicks.

The response was immediate and overwhelming. Millions of users engaged with the tool. Thousands wrote to us sharing stories, asking questions, reflecting on what they had discovered. It was not just a digital product. It was a moment of connection between journalism, history, and personal identity.

The desire to understand our past, where we come from, what shaped us, is universal. Across generations and cultures, people are looking for clarity, context, and truth about their own stories.

This is what quality journalism can do at its best. It helps us understand not only the world around us, but also ourselves. It provides guidance in moments of uncertainty. And it builds trust, especially at a time when information is abundant, but clarity is scarce.

To achieve this, millions of scanned National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) index cards from the US National Archives were secured in a short space of time, processed using AI software and statistically analysed. This enabled users to easily research their own family’s past. The tool at www.zeit.de was shared thousands of times. And accompanied by extensive international media coverage.

This project would not have been possible in this form without artificial intelligence. But the crucial point is this: AI did not tell the story. It enabled us to tell it better – expanding what journalism can do, and who it can reach.

You know, in fact, DIE ZEIT shouldn’t even exist anymore. In the 1970s, it was deep in the red. And by the end of the 1990s at the latest, when the internet emerged, industry experts were certain: DIE ZEIT wouldn’t survive. Yet today, 80 years after our founding, we’re still here – and we’re doing well.

This is not because we have so successfully defended the old ways. Quite the opposite. It is because we have seen change as a creative challenge, and as an opportunity, to become even better.

We have viewed the digital and mobile revolution – from the internet to smartphones, social media as an opportunity to reinvent DIE ZEIT. We have invested strategically – in the editorial department, in products, data competence, marketing and in new journalistic formats, whilst many competitors have made cuts in precisely these areas. Thus, our supposedly loss-making traditional newspaper has, step by step, become an agile media company that does not lament the use of new channels, but helps to shape them.

The result: in 2026, DIE ZEIT has more subscribers than ever before. And the majority read our journalism digitally – or encounter it on Instagram, in podcasts or on TikTok.
But the next transformation is already underway.

A glance at the latest forecasts paints a rather worrying picture for our industry once again: “Publishers Get Squeezed by AI and Creators” (Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026), “The Collapse of Journalism” (City Journal, 2025) – so the headlines read. A few months ago, ChatGPT Pulse was launched – an automatically generated news briefing tailored to users’ individual interests.

Pulse is one sign among many: AI platforms are becoming the new intermediaries for news and information – with a reach and data power that quality media can scarcely match. At the same time, they are increasingly taking control of the user interface: direct access to the audience and control over how content is found, curated and consumed.

That is why control over one’s own user relationship without any intermediaries is becoming the decisive condition for success. At the same time, we need technological and commercial standards for the use of journalistic content by AI systems. Copyrights must be respected and enforced — this is what the ZEIT Publishing Group stands for.

And yet I also see artificial intelligence, above all, as a great opportunity for our quality journalism. The success of our NSDAP research tool demonstrates this.

Our journalism thrives on expertise, diverse perspectives and distinctive voices. Our outstanding writers are what sets DIE ZEIT apart. Each of our podcast hosts is a brand in their own right; some have become stars who have almost achieved cult status, such as the hosts of our True Crime podcast ZEIT Verbrechen, with millions of downloads every month. We have our fledgling “Team Hochkant”, which posts on TikTok and enjoys celebrity status among the younger generation.

We practise a form of journalism that is recognisably human-made, which builds trust and, in turn, strengthens the bond with our organisation. We provide guidance in uncertain times – and amidst a flood of artificially generated content. This is our foundation, our strategic advantage. We must capitalise on this advantage through innovation and a creative drive – and this is precisely where new technologies offer us wonderful opportunities.

If we consistently put digital technology at the service of our content, it also helps us adapt to changing media usage and reach the readers, users and listeners of tomorrow. To put it another way: we must provide our brilliant journalists with the best technology to tell outstanding and relevant stories.

Recent studies show that we only reach young people to a limited extent through the print edition and digital subscriptions. However, the picture changes significantly as soon as we include social media, video and podcasts: through these channels, we reach an exceptionally young audience. That is why our evolution is also a shift towards audiovisual content.

Our core remains text-based journalism. But we are increasingly supplementing this with audiovisual formats such as podcasts and video. In this way, we reach our users, listeners and readers in line with their personal media preferences. And we can ensure that our content fits into their everyday lives. AI can also support us in this regard and help us translate our journalism into different formats or languages.

What does our journalism stand for in tomorrow’s media landscape? What do our readers expect from us today and in the future? Every new technology challenges us to answer these questions. So do broader societal trends, such as the growing loss of trust in the media.

These developments do not descend upon us publishers and media professionals like a force of nature. We decide what to make of these new technical possibilities – and how best to harness them for our own benefit and for the sake of our journalism. If we combine our strength in developing editorial content with technological excellence, we can create the best possible conditions for our journalists to tell their magnificent, distinctive, human-made stories – on every platform the media world of tomorrow has to offer.

Across Holtzbrinck, we are exploring how technology can expand the reach and impact of trusted content—connecting journalism, science, and education to serve audiences in new ways. What we are building is not just the future of individual brands, but a broader ecosystem of knowledge and storytelling that informs, inspires, and guides.
For the next 80 years as well.

Nils von der Kall is CEO of ZEIT Verlagsgruppe, one of Germany’s leading media companies and part of the Holtzbrinck network.