Daniel Puntas Bernet carries his conviction in his publisher's name. The Puntas Verlag, based in Bern, exists for one reason: to publish Reportagen, the only German-language magazine devoted exclusively to the reportage — what its editors call the Königsdisziplin, the supreme discipline of journalism. Six times a year, a pocket-sized volume arrives containing six long-form stories from around the world, researched on the ground, written in the first person or close third, and built on the old-fashioned premise that the best way to understand something is to go there, stay a while, and pay attention.
The magazine sends well-known reporters and writers to places and people that mainstream media has either overlooked or reduced to headlines. They deal with relevant and latently topical issues, fascinating places, and moving individual fates — the kind of stories that do not emerge from press conferences or wire services but from months of patient reporting. The format is deliberately modest: a paperback that fits in a coat pocket, printed on quality stock with a tactile cover, designed by the Swiss studio Moiré with the kind of restrained elegance that signals serious reading. There are no advertisements. There is no filler. Every page earns its place.
The awards have followed accordingly. The European Magazine Award in 2019. The Axel Springer Prize in 2018. The Zürcher Journalistenpreis in 2016. The Design Preis Schweiz in 2013. With a circulation of roughly 19,500 copies, Reportagen is small but ferociously committed to its own standards. It is economically and politically independent, which means the stories go where the reporting leads rather than where the sponsors point.
In a media landscape that has largely abandoned the long-form reportage in favour of hot takes and aggregated content, Reportagen exists as both a preservation project and a provocation — proof that readers will pay for stories that take time, that writers will produce their best work when given the space to do it, and that the oldest form of journalism remains, when practised with skill and integrity, the most powerful.
Explore Reportagen at <a href="https://reportagen.com/" target="\_blank">reportagen.com