Politische »Kultur«

The presentation of cultural topics in the feature pages of German newspapers did change much during the past two decades. Above all, the »policialization« of cultural news coverage leaps to the eye. Nevertheless, there can be no talk of basically new cultural pages. This is demonstrated by a longitudinal analysis of four daily newspapers within the period of 1983 to 2003. The journalistic offer in the feature pages of all four newspapers has not been reduced but instead it has been strongly extended. The amount of articles as well as their size has increased considerably. »Politics« has become the most important topic. In 2003, its share of all topics is 15 percent, but it does by no means supersede the classical topics like theatre, music, the fine arts and literature. With a share of about 50 percent, those topics still are the core of cultural news coverage. Obviously, journalists are more open to popular and entertaining forms where musical topics are concerned compare to, e. g., the theatre. The most frequent genre in the feature pages in 2003 is undisputably still the review. An »end of the critique« in favor of strongly personalizing, entertainment and service-accentuated forms of presentation cannot be proven.