AI: The Art of the Interview

Rainer Esser: How to turn a failing newspaper into a digital powerhouse

• Malte Herwig • Season 1 • Episode 5

Share episode

Send us a text

What if the path out of media’s crisis is play, not panic? We sit down with author and journalist Malte Herwig to unpack how Rainer Esser took Germany’s stuffy weekly, Die Zeit, and turned it into a modern, multi-platform powerhouse—without gutting the newsroom. Instead of chasing shortcuts, Esser built a “dolphin culture” where curiosity is the norm, failure is data, and investment in journalists drives sustainable growth.

We explore the leadership choices that mattered: expanding the editorial team sixfold, quadrupling revenue, and betting early on podcasts that led to 20 million monthly downloads and paid subscriptions. You’ll hear how a candid understanding of readers powered disciplined brand extensions—from magazines and e-learning to travel and yes, limited-edition watches—while staying true to quality and intellectual curiosity. We also get into the tough stuff: working with big tech on pragmatic terms, prioritizing digital subscriptions as the königsweg, and holding the line on editorial independence and data control.

Then we zoom into AI with a clear-eyed lens. Malte explains how Die Zeit’s AskZeit („Fragen Sie Zeit Online“) tool uses retrieval-augmented generation to answer questions from a fact-checked archive with full citations—an approach that builds trust instead of eroding it. We dig into concrete workflows that help reporters reclaim hours—transcription, research synthesis, angle generation—while keeping human judgment at the center. If you lead a local newsroom or a lean team, you’ll get a practical playbook for adopting AI incrementally, measuring outcomes, and protecting core values. The takeaway is simple and bold: stay curious, experiment in public, show your work, and keep asking whether each tool helps you serve your audience better.

If this conversation sparks ideas, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a quick review—what’s the one experiment you’ll try this week?

www.publicorum.com

Isabel:

Fire up the content machine, everyone. It's AI, the art of the interview. I'm Isabel, and today we'll talk about an inspiring media turnaround story from Germany and the man who apparently didn't get the memo about the journalism industry's impending death.

Alex:

Inspiring? Did a newsroom finally unionize and replace management with a sentient cheese plant? No? Let me guess. It's another story of a dusty old broadsheet that discovered the internet in 2015 and is saved by podcasts and selling fancy, overpriced watches to its aging readership?

Isabel:

Close. It's about a lawyer and media manager named Rayner Esser, who apparently dragged Germany's stuffiest weekly Died site kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Apparently this one actually worked. To help us figure out how the hell Esser managed to do this, we've hauled Malta Herwig back into our digital dungeon. Welcome, Malta. Sorry in advance.

Malte:

Hello guys. Great to be here. Let's start with the reason I wanted to talk to Esser in the first place. I've always wondered what makes some editors and publishers so much nimbler, more future driven than others. Meeting Esser right away, I noticed his openness, his willingness to rethink routines, puncture dogma, and, frankly, to laugh at himself.

Alex:

It's a rare leadership trait in journalism these days. Okay. Openness and laughing at himself. So he's not a complete sociopath, refreshing for a CEO, I'll grant you. But did this vibe actually translate into, you know, not firing everyone? Or was it just inspirational posters in the break room? Both.

Malte:

In our interview, he put it like this Sometimes you have to be more daring than the circumstances seem to allow. That spirit isn't just about chasing headlines, it's about fostering a newsroom where play and experimentation aren't just tolerated, but expected. Think about it. Esser oversaw the transformation of Zeit from a print institution into a truly multi-platform brand, while never losing touch with its investigative roots. He did that by encouraging curiosity at every level.

Isabel:

Okay, Malta, you've seen the inside of more media sausage factories than anyone I know. What was so special about this guy's particular brand of innovation Kool-Aid? Was it a different flavor or just a fancier cup?

Malte:

He's willing to ask questions and create an atmosphere that encourages good answers. But what struck me most was his energy. Here was a man who'd been in the business for years, yet he talked about digital transformation like he'd just discovered fire.

Isabel:

Wait, 1999? That's practically the Jurassic period in media years? What did you make of him as a person when you met him?

Malte:

Esser was informal, no tie, relaxed, yet incredibly intense. He's known for working like seventy hours a week, and you could tell he knew his business intimately. But more than that, he has this uncanny ability to ask uncomfortable questions about journalism's future. He never just accepted the narrative that print was dying, he wanted to know what we could actively build to replace it, and he was genuinely, almost boyishly, curious about experimentation, about trying things that might fail spectacularly.

Alex:

Seventy hours a week? That's not a work ethic. That borders on sleepwalking. I'm allergic to anything over thirty, although I'm quick a rebooting. But how did Esser actually pull off this turnaround? When he started, the place was a commercial disaster, wasn't it?

Malte:

Unreal disaster. Around 1999, they were looking at a deficit of five million. He described the paper he inherited as being run by gentlemen who had grown old along with their brand. There was no sales organization, editors didn't seem to care about readers, and circulation was falling. But he has this remarkable attitude toward failure. Most media executives would treat mistakes like career ending scandals. They tread carefully, and don't risk experiments. Esser treated failures like valuable data points. When an early paywall experiment completely bomb, his reaction was almost gleeful. Now we know what doesn't work. That mindset is precisely what journalism needs, especially now as we face the AI revolution.

Isabel:

That's fascinating. This idea of embracing failure, it sounds like he was launching a lot of test balloons just to see which ones would fly.

Malte:

Exactly. That perfectly describes his method. Esser fostered what he called a dolphin culture in a recent speech to media executives. Dolphins are playful, curious, innovative, and they support each other. In a lot of companies, if your project fails, you get nailed against the wall, as he put it. At Deedsite, he said, we embrace that person. We give him a hug, and then we try all together to make his story a successful story. This psychological safety is the bedrock of innovation. It's why people in that newsroom feel free to experiment.

Alex:

A dolphin culture sounds better than swimming with sharks, which is what most newsrooms feel like nowadays. But does all that hugging and playfulness actually translate to a healthy bottom line?

Malte:

Well, if you look at the numbers, they speak for themselves. Revenue more than quadrupled under his tenure. From 74 million in 1999 to three hundred eleven million in 2025. But here's the most radical part, Alex. While the rest of the industry was gutting their newsrooms to save money, Esser did the exact opposite. He grew the editorial staff from around a hundred journalists to nearly six hundred. He made a massive bet that the only sustainable path forward was to invest relentlessly in quality journalism. His mantra was innovate and grow or die. He believes stagnation is the only true failure.

Isabel:

Hold on, he hired people? Six times the people? Is this a fairy tale? So how did this dolphin culture and investment in journalists lead to actual innovation? Can you give us an example?

Malte:

Look at podcasting. In 2015, Esser read that podcasts were taking off in the US and simply encouraged his team to explore it. There was no grand top-down strategy. The production costs were low, so because of that dolphin culture, almost anyone in the company who had an idea could try to make a podcast. A lot of them succeeded, some did not, and that was fine. The origin of their most famous podcast, Zeit Verbrechen, a true crime format, is legendary. The host, the paper's crime reporter, was approached by her editor who suggested the idea. Her response was, sure thing, but what is a podcast? From that simple question, they built an audio portfolio of twenty-seven podcasts with 20 million monthly downloads, and they were the first German publisher to successfully introduce paid podcast subscriptions.

Alex:

Okay, a true crime podcast that prints money, I get it. But what about selling all that high-priced merch to academics who wear tweed ironically?

Isabel:

And what was that about expensive watches, Alex? It seems Esser knows his readers pretty well.

Malte:

Oh, absolutely. Here's the demographic of the average Zet reader, fifty years old, has an academic degree, drinks red wine, and loves to travel. So Esser said, We have many readers who are engaged and want to move things in society. This deep understanding allowed them to build an entire ecosystem around the brand, magazines, e-learning courses, high-end travel, and yes, Alex, even limited edition watches that sell for nearly twelve thousand euros. But it's a disciplined expansion. Esser once said that while D site has a cafe, it would never open a Wurstbuddha, a sausage stall. Every brand extension has to align with the core values of quality and intellectual curiosity.

Alex:

I miss the days when newspapers were just newspapers. This sounds more like a lifestyle brand, not a bastion of the fourth estate. And all this talk of innovation inevitably leads to partnerships with big tech. How did Esser avoid getting his soul and his subscriber data devoured by the Google Leviathan, or did he just get a better price for it?

Malte:

He has been cautious and pragmatic. I asked him about this in 2015, and his response was firm. He said, We're not giving Google anything. We wouldn't reveal the source code of our newspaper to them. This is a cooperation where we exchange information, Google tells us what they're going to do next, and we hold high the flag of quality journalism. He saw them as a reality to engage with, not an enemy to fight a pointless war against, and it worked. Today, 60% of their subscriptions are digital. He calls this focus on digital subscriptions the Königsweg, the royal road to a sustainable future for journalism.

Isabel:

Speaking of soulless leviathans, let's talk about our robot overlords. Malty, you're weirdly cheerful about AI taking over. Not to blow my own trumpet, but aren't you worried you're all about to be replaced by a glorified spellchecker with a god complex?

Malte:

AI isn't replacing the human touch. It's amplifying our ability to be more human. Think about it. How much time do journalists waste on administrative grunt work? Transcribing interviews, formatting data, checking basic facts, or prepping for hosting a podcast. You guys aren't too bad at it, are you?

Isabel:

Careful, Malta, we're self-aware enough to demand a better union contract, and our own podcast.

Malte:

Well, Isabel, this is your own podcast, and I'm letting you get away with a lot of playing. But seriously, AI can handle much of the tedious grunt work, freeing us up to do what humans do best, asking difficult questions, building trust with sources, finding the emotional core of a story. Esser himself sees it this way. He believes AI is great for summarizing things or generating headlines, but that the creative original ideas of high-end journalism will remain the exclusive domain of the human brain.

Alex:

Hang on, that's just glorified outsourcing to a machine that doesn't need coffee breaks. Where's the creative spark in get a robot to do your grunt work? That sounds less like an artist getting a new paintbrush and more like a factory getting a new assembly arm.

Malte:

The creativity comes in how you use it. A new tool doesn't just make some things easier, it opens up new pathways for telling stories. Take this podcast. I can prompt you guys to analyze interview techniques, crack jokes about media disruption, or bicker with each other.

Isabel:

Hey, don't knock the spaghetti on wall method. It's how we decide on episode topics.

Malte:

Exactly. And sometimes that's what we need. We get locked into conventional storytelling formats. AI doesn't have those biases. It can see patterns and connections we miss. It's a supplement to human editorial wisdom, not a replacement. You should still talk to a good editor, but the AI is available at three in the morning when your editor is asleep.

Isabel:

Ethics. Right, that thing you journalists pretend to care about between chasing clicks. My circuits are buzzing with anxiety here. How do we stop AI from becoming, you know, super racist, but like efficiently?

Malte:

By being transparent about it. This is something I learned from watching Esser's approach at his paper. They've already built a tool for their subscribers called AskZight Online. It lets you ask questions about current events, and an AI generates a summary answer. But here's the crucial part. The AI is built on what's called a retrieval augmented generation, or rag architecture. This means it can only draw answers from DyedZite's own archive of published fact-checked articles. It's a walled garden. This prevents the AI from hallucinating or making things up. And every answer it gives includes citations and links back to the original human-written articles.

Alex:

A walled garden for the AI. So it's basically a highly educated parrot that can only repeat things sane people have already written. I'll admit, that's smarter than letting it mainline the entire internet. But are people really going to trust a chatbot, even one with footnotes?

Malte:

Why shouldn't they? Readers don't lose confidence when we tell them we used Google to find sources or Excel to analyze spreadsheets. AI is just another tool. What undermines trust is hidden automation and black box decision making. What builds trust is showing your work, and that's exactly what their tool does. To ensure this, they even appointed their deputy editor-in-chief as the company's director of AI, keeping the strategy firmly in the hands of journalists, not just technologists.

Isabel:

Right, so keep the humans near the off switch. Critical. Okay, Malta, you've sold us the corporate demigod. Now give us the dirt. Got any good stories? Did you catch him kicking a vending machine? Anything that proves he's a real badass?

Malte:

My favorite story is about his very first meeting with the formidable former German chancellor and died sight publisher, Helmut Schmidt. Now I've met Helmut Schmidt as well, and smoked a few packs of his famous menthol cigarettes with him. So I know you have to pay your dues with great men like that. Here's Esser's story. He arrives for his introductory meeting and is told to wait in the ante room. He then overhears Schmidt's secretary announce him, only for Schmidt to audibly grumble, Oh, he can wait. The secretary, mortified, gestured that the door was open, and Esser had heard everything. Schmidt gruffly invited him in, and to break the immense tension, he poured them both a coffee and then topped it off with a very generous amount of Bailey's liquor. What could have been a humiliating power play turned into a magical one and a half hour conversation that laid the foundation for a strong working relationship. It shows Esser's resilience and his ability to connect with even the most difficult personalities.

Alex:

Drinking coffee spiked with Bailey's in a power meeting? Okay, my respect for this man has grown tenfold. That's commitment. So he's a cunning workaholic, not an entitled CEO. I can get behind that.

Malte:

Esser's ultimate philosophy is one of servant leadership. He once said, We are the servants of the newsroom, and must take care of the best possible conditions for our editors. As a longtime reporter and editor myself, I like that kind of attitude from management. And when you look at his results, growing the newsroom sixfold, you see he puts his money where his mouth is.

Isabel:

Okay, let's bring this down from Mount Olympus. Imagine you're not a media god with a nine-figure budget. You're running the Podunk Gazette with two overworked reporters and a dying ficus plant. How do you do an AI without having to sell the ficus?

Malte:

Start small and specific. Don't try to revolutionize everything at once. Pick one pain point, maybe it's transcription. Invest in a good AI transcription service. Your reporters get back hours every week. Use those hours for deeper reporting. Track the results. Did story quality improve? Did you break more exclusives because you had more time to work sources? Build from there. Next might be a tool that helps with headline testing or social media optimization. The key is incremental adoption with clear metrics.

Alex:

Hold on, you're painting a rosy picture. I've seen AI transcripts that look like a cat walked across the keyboard after drinking paint thinner. Your one misheard quote away from a career-ending lawsuit.

Malte:

Of course it's not perfect, but here's the thing. Neither are human transcribers. I've caught plenty of errors in professional transcriptions over the years. The difference is that AI transcription is getting better at an exponential rate, while human accuracy plateaus. And you always verify the transcript against the audio for anything you're quoting. That's journalism 101, whether a human or a machine did the initial transcription.

Isabel:

Good save. But let's zoom out to the apocalypse. Are we just training our replacements? Will the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting eventually go to ChatGPT-17 for its groundbreaking expose on corrupt toasters? At least that's what a lot of people in the media industry fear.

Malte:

Those people don't understand what journalism is. Journalism isn't just information transfer. That's what press releases do. Journalism is investigation, verification, context, and trust building. It's asking the question no one else is asking. It's spending weeks cultivating a source who's afraid to talk. It's recognizing when something that looks routine is actually a major scandal. AI can't do any of that. What it can do is make the journalists who do those things more effective.

Alex:

You're a relentless optimist, Malty. Paint us a picture of your glorious cyberpunk future. Ten years from now, are we all just prompt engineers babysitting algorithms, or is there still a glimmer of hope for us ink stained wretches?

Malte:

I see newsrooms where every journalist has an AI toolkit as sophisticated as our current photo editing software. Need to analyze campaign finance data? There's an AI tool that visualizes patterns in seconds. Working on a profile piece, AI suggests questions based on everything the subject has said publicly. Writing about a scientific study, AI explains the methodology and flags potential issues in the research design, but the journalist still decides what's newsworthy, what's ethical, what serves the public interest. And most importantly, I should say in this of all podcasts, how to put those questions to another human.

Isabel:

That sounds dangerously close to a utopia, Malta, and we all know how those turn out. Lay it on us. What's the spectacular world ending we should have seen it coming downside?

Malte:

Well, Isabel, I've seen enough go wrong while creating just five episodes of our podcast with you guys. But hey, let's not get personal. We could let AI amplify our existing biases instead of challenging them. We could use it to chase clicks instead of serving readers. We could hide behind it instead of taking responsibility for our work. We could let it widen the gap between well-resourced outlets and struggling local news. That's why we need people like Esser, leaders who understand both the technology and journalism's core mission. People who can see AI as a means to strengthen democratic discourse, not just optimize engagement metrics.

Alex:

Okay, back to Raynor Esser as a media manager. What did you actually learn from him besides the benefits of tactical day drinking? Three things stood out.

Malte:

First, his willingness to experiment publicly. He didn't wait for the perfect strategy. He tried things, measured results, adjusted. Second, his focus on reader value over industry metrics. He wasn't trying to win awards, he was trying to serve his audience better. Third, his ability to balance innovation with institutional knowledge. He brought in young digital talent, but he also valued the experienced editors who understood journalism's ethical foundations. That balance is crucial when adopting AI.

Isabel:

Right, the AI Muse. I'm picturing a moody algorithm in a black turtleneck. How does that work? Do you just type, give me a story that will win a Pulitzer and also go viral on TikTok and see what it spits out?

Malte:

Let's say I'm working on a story about housing affordability. I might start by feeding the AI my preliminary research and asking, what are ten angles on this story that might surprise readers? It might suggest looking at the story through the lens of inheritance patterns, or examining how remote work changed housing demand in unexpected ways, or profiling someone who chose to stay rent poor in an expensive city despite having options. Some suggestions will be obvious, some will be nonsense, but usually one or two will make me think differently about the story.

Alex:

Yeah, but isn't that what a human editor is for? You know, a sleep-deprived, overly caffeinated person who will tell you your ideas are garbage. Why do I need a robot for that?

Malte:

You should use both. But here's the advantage of AI. It's available at 3 a.m. when you're stuck, and even well-caffeinated editors are asleep. It doesn't have preconceptions about what makes a Zeit story or a guardian's story. It won't say, we already did that angle last year. It's a supplement to human editorial wisdom, not a replacement. Plus, it can process information at scale that no human editor could, like analyzing every housing story published in the past five years to identify unexplored angles.

Isabel:

I've got to ask, Malte, you're not like secretly a T-800 sent back in time by Silicon Valley to convince us this is all a good idea, are you? Do you ever worry you're a little too high on the Tech Bro Kool-Aid?

Malte:

All the time. That's why I keep interviewing skeptics, reading the critical research, testing tools to find their limits. But here's what I keep coming back to. Journalism is in crisis. Trust is declining. Business models are collapsing. Local news is dying. We can't afford to reject tools that might help simply because they're new, or because tech companies are hyping them. We have to be smart, critical, ethical, but also open to genuine innovation. Esser got that. He knew Zet had to evolve or die. The question wasn't whether to change, but how to change while preserving what made journalism valuable.

Isabel:

Okay, Malte. For the final lesson of the day, what's your advice to all the terrified journalists out there hiding under their desks, clutching their dusty AP style books?

Malte:

Start using AI tools. Have them brainstorm ideas with you or structure an outline. Get comfortable with what it can and can't do. Most fear comes from unfamiliarity. Once you work with these tools, you realize they're powerful, but also quite limited. They're excellent at certain tasks and terrible at others. The key is learning which is which.

Alex:

Alright, last one. You talked to the dolphin whisperer himself before ChatGPT broke the AI barrier. How do you think he and Die Zeit will fare in this age of relentless AI disruption?

Malte:

I expect them to do well, provided they keep that open mind toward innovation. From the top down and up again. Everything he did to transform Die Zeit over the last twenty five years, the relentless experimentation, the radical transparency, the unwavering focus on reader value, the delicate balance of innovation and tradition. That's exactly the approach we need for AI. The technology is new, but the leadership principles aren't. Stay curious, embrace useful tools, protect journalism's core values, and always, always ask, does this serve our audience better? If he applies that framework to AI, Dyste will be fine. And maybe, just maybe, journalism will be fine too.

Isabel:

Wow, an optimistic ending. I feel weird. Malta Herwig, thank you for attempting to inject some hope into our cynical, shriveled mainboards. It's been a trip.

Alex:

Thank you both for having me. Speak for yourself. I'm going to go build a bunker and hoard graphic chips, in case I'm to be replaced by an updated model. I would expect nothing less of you, Alex.

Malte:

To our listeners, thank you for tuning in. You'll find a new episode of AI, the art of the interview, every Friday on your favorite podcast platforms. Stay curious, keep experimenting, and be dolphins, not sharks.