582 FRANK BÖSCH AND CHRISTOPH CLASSEN
the (further) consolidation and erosion of the press, the tight hold of re-
gional monopolies within the newspaper landscape, and the persistence
of a special regional consciousness that propped up the corresponding
print media. Financially weak, newly founded local newspapers, for ex-
ample, hardly had a chance anywhere—not just in East Germany. In the
West, too, almost all attempts to establish new daily newspapers or news
magazines had failed since the 1950s. Furthermore, many entirely dif-
ferent lifestyle publications folded in the 1990s in the old Federal Re-
public as well, ranging from the entertainment magazine Quick (1992) to
the Protestant Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt (2000) and the satire
magazine Mad (1995). The decided preference for service and advice
magazines in the East also proved to be a harbinger of what was to be-
come a general trend. Even one of the successful new magazines on the
West German market, Focus, increasingly off ered a mix of politics and
service content. Likewise, akin to what had taken place in East Germany
in the early 1990s, classifi eds and marketing catalogs proved to be one of
the most successful print media. They were able to sustain a large read-
ership even in the Internet Age, although the free dailies never managed
to take hold in Germany.
The negative assessments of the East German media landscape also
look diff erent when the case in East Germany is compared to other post-
socialist countries. After 1990, it was hoped everywhere that the free-
dom of the press would foster the democratization process. In actuality,
however, democracy only came slowly to the former Eastern Bloc, and
it still appears to be in danger in some countries.^123 In contrast to the
other postsocialist contexts, such as southeastern Europe, Slovakia, and
especially Russia, the role of state paternalism in the transformation of
the media in East Germany was less pronounced. The involvement of for-
eign Western publishers in media takeovers in the other socialist coun-
tries was also stronger, although it was the German Springer-Verlag that
played a major role in this process. In Czechoslovakia, for example, about
half of the periodicals landed in Western hands. Many of the publications
of the opposition, such as Gazeta Wyborcza in Poland and Lidove noviny
in Czechoslovakia, lost some of their readers. The widespread popularity
of strong tabloid media and private stations that were often politicized
can at least partially account for the rapid success of populist parties in
Central Europe.^124
Furthermore, the radio and television landscape in East Germany was
largely shaped by the importation of structures from the Federal Repub-
lic. The remarkably quick transition from propaganda to independent
journalism that took place beginning in 1989 and the short boom in crit-
ical formats did not help GDR television in the long run. Doubts as to the