German newspaper Netzeitung.de is part of a successful media empire, with stakes in radio, television, through to a number of internet sites. What marks out this player from others is that Netzeitung is only six years-old, and a web-only paper.

It has survived being an “online experiment”, having been tossed around by various media owners such as Lycos and Bertelsmann. Howevever, the paper has proved to be worth the investment with an expected profit of $10 million this year.

The Media Guardian reports Netzeitung “remains impressive in the breadth, depth and the timeliness of its reporting. It is among the internet’s most cleanly designed news sites”.

Netzeitung has a team of sixty reporters as well as a plethora of citizen journalists. The online paper has 1.2 million readers per month and recently took over a Berlin radio statio, producing both radio shows and podcasts online. Netzeitung also produces videotext and online news for German TV, transforming itself from “online experiment” to successful media empire.

What is most important however, is the Netzeitung’s latest protege; Readers-Edition.de, an online paper that truly encompasses citizen journalism. Readers submit news and photos on a variety of different topics such as politics, business and sports and get paid for their efforts, if they are published by Netzeitung.

Contributors are subject to being edited, by their fellow readers and writers who act as “volunteer moderators” with the supervision of one Netzeitung journalist. Meetings are held across Germany with journalists and contributors where contributors can learn how to write by looking at rejected stories as well as sharing industry knowledge.