About Der Postillon

Der Postillon

Der Postillon is Germany's best-known satirical news website, a parody news organisation that reports on international, national and local events in the deadpan format of a conventional newspaper and TV news programme — except that none of it is true. Founded in 2008 by PR expert Stefan Sichermann, the site has grown from a hobby project into one of the most widely read German-language outlets online, with a social media reach that has at times surpassed that of established news portals. Its motto, "Ehrliche Nachrichten – unabhängig, schnell, seit 1845" (honest news — independent, fast, since 1845), is itself part of the joke: the site claims an unbroken history stretching back to October 1845, and its very first FAQ entry patiently explains that everything published is satire.

Overview

Der Postillon occupies in Germany roughly the position that The Onion holds in the United States: it was, in fact, partly inspired by The Onion, and its name — referring to the French word postillon and its literary use in German — evokes a mock-venerable newspaper tradition. Articles mimic the full register of real journalism: breaking-news tickers, commentaries, advice columns, opinion editorials, fake surveys and even a television-style news show. The humour works by applying the sober language of news reporting to absurd premises, and part of the site's cultural footprint comes from how often its stories are briefly mistaken for real news — by readers, by other media and occasionally by foreign broadcasters.

The site is run by its founder and owner Stefan Sichermann, who serves as editor. What began as a one-man hobby became a professional operation after a satirical article about the shutdown of the film-piracy site Kino.to went viral on Facebook and Twitter, bringing the Postillon a far larger audience. Sichermann left his PR agency job in 2011, hired assistants and financed the operation through advertising, a merchandise shop and reader donations via Flattr. An English-language edition, "The Postillon," extends the concept to international readers.

History

Sichermann launched Der Postillon in 2008 alongside his day job in public relations. For the first years it was a side project, but the Kino.to article's viral spread demonstrated that a German-language Onion-style outlet could find a mass audience. By 2011 Sichermann was running the site full-time, and its growth since has been driven overwhelmingly by social media: Wikipedia notes that at one point the Postillon's social media impact exceeded that of major official news portals such as Focus Online, Süddeutsche.de and the Frankfurter Allgemeine. In October 2015 the site recorded more than 14 million visitors in a single month.

The site's history is punctuated by episodes in which its satire escaped into reality. Shortly after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, a Postillon piece speculating about the technical features of his coffin — and the inscription "buried in my iTomb" — drew furious comments from readers who missed the joke; the phrase "ein Leser weniger" (one reader fewer), left by outraged commenters, became a running gag in the Postillon community. When Felix Baumgartner made his record skydive in 2012, a Postillon article declaring the jump invalid because the Austrian had crossed a foul line before the start signal angered the daredevil's fans. In the same year, German television host Dieter Moor lifted a Postillon joke about Berlin Brandenburg Airport's endless delays — the site had proposed introducing a new German future tense to make conversations about the airport possible — and used it on air without attribution; after several outlets called him out, Moor apologised and credited the source.

Perhaps the most consequential confusion came in January 2014, when numerous German media reported that former chancellery minister Ronald Pofalla was expected to join the executive board of Deutsche Bahn. The Postillon published a backdated but otherwise accurate parody of the story, and because its posts are so frequently mistaken for genuine reporting on social media, newsrooms and the public alike were thrown into confusion. Sichermann used the episode to criticise the mainstream media, arguing that they had proved less trustworthy than an openly satirical site. Later that year, a Postillon article claiming that a pub landlord who had promised a free shot for every German goal in the 2014 World Cup semi-final against Brazil had been ruined financially was picked up as a true story by several Russian news outlets, including the television broadcaster Russia-24.

Programming and Content

The core product is the stream of satirical news articles on the website, covering politics, society, culture, sport and everyday life in Germany and the world. Around that core the Postillon has built a small media universe. There is a constantly updated newsticker, commentary and advice formats, opinion pieces and fabricated opinion polls. In 2012 the team published a book collecting the best articles from the site's first years, and in the same year the first fake television news broadcasts appeared on YouTube. Further videos were produced in cooperation with Yahoo, and some Postillon video content has been broadcast by the German public broadcaster NDR. Since 2014 the spin-off news show "Postillon24" has extended the brand into a parody television-news format.

The English-language edition, The Postillon, translates the concept for an international audience, and the site's YouTube channel carries its video output. A merchandise operation — the "Shopillon" — sells books, calendars, games and T-shirts, forming part of the revenue base alongside advertising and reader donations.

Coverage and Audience

Der Postillon addresses a German-speaking audience first and foremost, though the English edition and the universal language of its visual gags give it reach beyond the German-speaking countries. Its readership skews young and digitally native: the site's rise coincided with the era in which Facebook and Twitter became primary news-discovery channels in Germany, and its shareable, headline-driven format was built for that environment. The October 2015 figure of more than 14 million monthly visitors put it in the same league as the country's largest news portals by traffic, an extraordinary position for a parody outlet with a tiny staff.

The site's cultural influence is disproportionate to its size. Its jokes routinely enter everyday German speech — the "Futur III" airport joke and the "ein Leser weniger" gag are examples — and its stories are shared, debated and occasionally believed by millions. The recurring phenomenon of Postillon articles being mistaken for real news has itself become a subject of media-studies commentary on digital literacy: the site's own FAQ opens by stating plainly that everything it publishes is satire and "dreist zusammengelogen" (brazenly made up), yet the deadpan execution continues to fool readers, including professional journalists.

Ownership

Der Postillon is owned, run and edited by its founder Stefan Sichermann. It is an independent, privately held operation with no publishing-group parent and no outside investors. Revenue comes from advertising on the site, the Shopillon merchandise store and voluntary reader contributions. This lean, founder-led structure has allowed the site to keep its editorial voice consistent — every article is, in the end, an expression of Sichermann's newsroom — while remaining financially independent of the media conglomerates it so often parodies.

Digital Presence

Digital presence is not a complement to Der Postillon's business; it is the business. The website at der-postillon.com is the flagship, but the outlet's true distribution engine is social media: its Facebook page has counted its followers in the millions, and its articles are engineered to travel across Facebook, Twitter/X and messaging apps. The YouTube channel hosts the Postillon24 videos and other visual formats, and the English-language site serves the international audience. The operation also maintains the Shopillon web store for merchandise.

The site's digital strategy has been recognised with some of Germany's top online-media honours: in 2010 it won the Deutsche Welle BOBs award for Best German Weblog, and in 2013 it received the Grimme Online Award. For an outlet that insists it has been publishing since 1845, the twenty-first-century distribution machinery — social feeds, video platforms, an online shop — sits in cheerful contradiction to the mock-venerable brand, and that contradiction is very much the point.