The Süddeutsche Zeitung is a large daily newspaper in Germany, published in Munich. It has a center-left, liberal, social-liberal, progressive-liberal, and social-democrat tone.
The SZ was the first newspaper to receive a license from the US military administration of Bavaria in 1945, five months after the end of World War II in Germany. It was published that same evening with no censorship or constraints of conscience. The first article began with: “For the first time since the collapse of the brown rule of terror, a newspaper run by Germans is published in Munich.”
The Süddeutsche newspaper was on the brink of bankruptcy in 2002 due to a decline in ad sales. To save the paper, a regional newspaper chain called Südwestdeutsche Medien invested 150 million euros. As part of their changes, they reduced staff, closed a regional edition in Dusseldorf, and scrapped a section devoted to news from Berlin.
In 2004, SZ launched the Süddeutsche Bibliothek. It was a series of 50 famous novels and movies on DVD, as well as a science magazine and children’s books. These special editions were available at certain newsstands and bookshops.
In 2015, an anonymous source provided a large data set to a newspaper. The data contained confidential information about an offshore company. The newspaper and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists spent over a year reviewing the data before publishing stories from it on April 3, 2016.
In late 2017, the Paradise Papers were released. This 1.4-terabyte data set contained about 13.4 million documents that revealed information about financial offshore jurisdictions, including Bermuda and Singapore. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists was called in to investigate the papers, which covered seven decades from 1950 to 2016.
In May 2018, the German Press Council opened an inquiry to determine if a Süddeutsche Zeitung cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was anti-Semitic. The newspaper ended its collaboration with the cartoonist and apologized, admitting the cartoon was a mistake.
Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) is a German newspaper with 1.1 million readers daily. It has a progressive-liberal stance and generally center-left orientation, making it the only meaningful opposition in Bavaria. SZ is published in Nordisch format and supports the SPD in elections.