Type | Daily tabloid, except Sundays and public holidays |
---|---|
Format | Broadsheet ("nordisch" size: 376 x 528 mm) |
Owner(s) | Axel Springer AG |
Editor | Julian Reichelt |
Founded | 1952 |
Political alignment |
Populism Conservatism |
Language | German |
Headquarters | Berlin |
Circulation | 2,500,000 daily (2013) |
Website | www |
The Bild newspaper (or Bild-Zeitung, literally Picture Newspaper; pronounced [ˈbɪlt]) is a German tabloid published by Axel Springer AG.
The paper is published from Monday to Saturday; on Sundays, its sister paper Bild am Sonntag ("Bild on Sunday") is published instead, which has a different style and its own editors. Bild is tabloid in style but broadsheet in size. It is the best-selling non-Asian newspaper and has the eight-largest circulation worldwide.
Bild has been described as "notorious for its mix of gossip, inflammatory language, and sensationalism" and as having a huge influence on German politicians. Its nearest English-language stylistic and journalistic equivalent is often considered to be the British national newspaper The Sun, the second highest selling European tabloid newspaper, with which it shares a degree of rivalry.
Der Spiegel wrote in 2006 that Bild "flies just under the nonsense threshold of American and British tabloids ... For the German desperate, it is a daily dose of high-resolution soft porn". According to The Guardian, for 28 years from 1984 to 2012, Bild had topless girls featuring on its first page; the paper published more than 5,000 topless pictures.
Bild was founded by Axel Springer in 1952. It mostly consisted of pictures (hence the name Bild, German for picture). Bild soon became the best-selling tabloid, by a wide margin, not only in Germany, but in all of Europe, though essentially to German readers. Through most of its history, Bild was based in Hamburg. The paper moved its headquarters to Berlin in March 2008, stating that it was an essential base of operations for a national newspaper. It is printed nationwide with 32 localized editions. Special editions are printed in some favoured German holiday destinations abroad such as Spain, Italy, Turkey and Greece.