Frank Hornig: German Born, America Loving Reporter
The German press is progressive, very critical and often pessimistic said Der Spiegel foreign correspondent Frank Hornig.
That’s why he loves working in the United States.
“I like the optimistic attitude here. It’s really great,” Hornig said.
After Katrina, Hornig visited the Gulf Coast and saw thousand who lost everything. What shocked him most was their can-do attitude.
“Many of them would just say, ‘Let’s move to Georgia and start over.’ But in Germany if something happens, they would say the government needs to help,” he said.
“The openness of the people is great too. Der Spiegel is a German weekly magazine; you would think companies would rather talk to the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times than some German magazine,” Hornig said. “But people are quite open and they’re nice to talk to.”
Hornig is one of the four foreign correspondents employed in the States by Der Spiegel. There is one in Washington, D.C., two in New York City (where he is based), and one in Boston.
“I’m basically the business and economy guy,” he said. “Since there’s only four guys here, sometimes you get to work on global warming or Hollywood. It’s a very broad spectrum.”
Being a member of such a small staff, Hornig gets many opportunities to travel. His magazine prides itself on focusing on the human element, so face-to-face investigation and interviews have helped his stories. Hornig said he loves traveling out of New York because there are so many stories across America.
Hornig said he could have reported on the discussion in Washington, D.C. about abortion, but he decided to go where it all started. He traveled to South Dakota, a hot bed for abortion debates. Hornig visited during the state government’s attempts to introduce strict legislation on abortion.
“In Germany you can pick out super conservative people from really far away, and you don’t really like them. But here, everybody’s nice, even if you disagree with their opinion,” Hornig said.
German audiences are interested in and critical of the happenings in the United States. Hornig said President Bush is in every German publication every day. There is a huge opposition in Europe, especially in Germany and France against the Bush administration. Whatever is written about the administration and its policies is interesting for a German audience, Hornig said.
In last week’s edition, the reporters covered German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s opposition to the U.S. war against terror, the U.S. occupation in Afghanistan and its plans for Iran. “Basically the Chancellor opposes it,” he said. “She does it in a very diplomatic, and very quiet way to underline the German position.”
Hornig continued: “And since I’m the business-economy guy, I talk about the world economy and the role the U.S. is playing. You can be sure there’s a huge interest in Germany in about import, export, and trends in the US.”
The U.S. news gathering and reporting is much faster than in Germany, Hornig said. He worked in Der Spiegel’s home office in Hamburg and then in Berlin for eight years before moving to the New York office.
“It’s very quick here and you find trends very soon in the press. The Germans are a little bit slower,” he said. “You can pick up trends that start here, like MySpace or Web 2.0. They get to Germany a little bit later, but they always reach Germany.”
One trend Hornig researched was the upsurge in hiring Chinese nannies in New York City, as opposed to French or Spanish. Hornig said the wealthy hired Chinese nannies to prepare their children for globalization by learning Mandarin at a young age.
The power struggle between China and the United States, including trade, imports and problems for American companies, was a cover story he wrote. He worked on several global warming pieces, focusing and what Washington is doing or what it is not.
“We’re following, of course, the upcoming presidential election and the candidates,” Hornig said. “Whether Hillary, Obama or Guliani is going for it.”
Der Spiegel and many other European publications have something about the United States in them every week. However Hornig said the American press has its focus elsewhere.
“My feeling in general is that the American press is obsessed with Iran, Iraq and the things going on there. They don’t care so much about Europe as they used to do,” he
said. “I feel like we need a shift of attention. You don’t read much about Germany, France or the UK.”
said. “I feel like we need a shift of attention. You don’t read much about Germany, France or the UK.”
“It’s always, I don’t know, about the World Cup,” Hornig said, laughing.
-----------
Picture courtesy of Paul J. Richards and AFP, and Spacewar.
No comments:
Post a Comment