Flagship titles such as "Stern", "Geo", "Brigitte" and "Capital" are to be continued, a person familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday. However, many other magazines, including in particular offshoots of the main magazines, are to be discontinued, sold or only published digitally. The management expects around 500 jobs to be cut. A further 200 jobs are to be cut through sales, it said. Cost reductions of around 70 million euros are planned by 2025.

RTL CEO Thomas Rabe informed the workforce about his plans at the publishing headquarters on Hamburg's Baumwall. The parent company Bertelsmann and its TV subsidiary RTL Group had announced in 2021 that RTL Deutschland and Gruner+Jahr would be merged in 2022. In the meantime, many Gruner+Jahr executives have left the company. Top managers from Gütersloh and Cologne have recently taken a close look at all publishing titles and examined what should be kept and what should possibly be sold. Rabe, who is currently head of Bertelsmann, RTL Group and RTL Germany, has emphasized that resources must be reallocated and structures questioned for the planned investments in the important streaming business.

(Report by Klaus Lauer. Edited by Sabine Wollrab and Olaf Brenner. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com)