Christoph Schwennicke becomes Managing Director
The former editor-in-chief and managing director of the political magazine Cicero will lead Corint Media together with Markus Runde. The expansion of the management board marks the start of intensified efforts to enforce press publishers’ ancillary rights.
Press Release
Berlin, 2021-05-18
Shortly before a far-reaching law protecting ancillary rights for news publishers comes into effect, the Collective Management Organisation (CMO) Corint Media is strengthening its team. Christoph Schwennicke, the former publisher, editor-in-chief and manager of the political magazine Cicero, will lead Corint Media together with Markus Runde with immediate effect.
The expansion of the management at this time marks the start of Corint Media’s efforts to enforce its publishers’ rights more rigorously on platforms that dominate the digital sphere, such as Facebook and Google. Corint Media’s aim is, on the one hand, to enforce appropriate remuneration of these rights, while on the other, to regulate the conditions of access to these platforms in a way that ensures the permanency of the free press and the preservation of its important functions in a democracy. Schwennicke, a trained journalist and former managing shareholder of Res Publica Verlag (Cicero and Monopoly) will take over Corint Media’s external communication.
Schwennicke, who was born in 1966, worked for nine years as editor-in-chief and managing director of Cicero, after various positions that included leading roles in the editorial office for parliamentary affairs of the Badische Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Spiegel. He is one of Germany’s most renowned political journalists and a regular guest on political talk shows, and radio andtelevision press conferences. As a journalist, he has received numerous awards, including the Theodor Wolff Prize, the Henri Nannen Prize and the Media Prize of the German Bundestag.
“I am very much looking forward to this new, huge and important task,” says Schwennicke. “The question of whether digital journalistic products are adequately and fairly remunerated by users is decisive for the continued existence of quality journalism, the safeguarding of our industry’s business model and the ongoing guaranteed working basis of the profession that I love and have practised with passion for decades. Ultimately, the press is a systemically relevant sector for plural democracy. The new law and a fresh awareness of the value of intellectual property in the digital world are building momentum. Together with my excellent colleague Markus Runde, I would like to make use of this.”
Dr Torsten Rossmann, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Corint Media, said: “With Christoph Schwennicke, we are appointing a committed journalist and advocate of democracy to take on the greatest challenge for the future of the German press and broadcasting companies – that is, the dispute with global digital platforms such as Google and Facebook over appropriate and fair remuneration for use of content from publishers and broadcasters. We are delighted to welcome him onto the successful Corint Media team.”
Background: Corint Media
Corint Media is a European company in the private media industry. It manages the copyrights and ancillary rights of almost every German and several international private television and radio stations as well as of numerous press publishers.
Media companies represented by Corint Media include TV stations such as Sat.1, ProSieben, RTL, WELT, SPORT1, CNBC, Eurosport, VOX, MTV and CNN, radio stations such as ANTENNE BAYERN, radio ffn, Klassik Radio, Radio Hamburg, HitRadio-FFH, RPR1 and RTL RADIO, and press publishers such as Axel Springer, DuMont Mediengruppe, Verlagsgesellschaft Madsack, Augsburger Allgemeine, Aschendorff Mediengruppe, Rheinische Post Mediengruppe and Münchener Zeitungs-Verlag.
Corint Media is one of 13 CMOs authorised in Germany and comes under the supervision of the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA).