First Female Editor of Bild, Influential German Tabloid, Steps Down<br />The move closes a chapter on a stunning rise for Ms. Koch, who went from being an unpaid trainee to the paper’s most senior editor in the space of a decade,<br />and stands against efforts by German media groups to integrate women into senior newsroom and media roles.<br />Ms. Koch’s departure as top editor of Bild, a mass-market tabloid owned by Axel Springer,<br />the German publishing giant, comes a little over two years after she took up the post.<br />BERLIN — Tanit Koch, the first female editor in chief of Bild, Germany’s best-selling newspaper, said on Friday<br />that she was resigning after an apparent power struggle with another executive at the publication.<br />“Her personality is completely different from Julian Reichelt, but in terms of journalism or politics they are remarkably similar.”<br />Ms. Koch will leave her post on March 1, at which point Mr. Reichelt, 37, will take over her responsibilities.<br />“2017 was shaped by this until my willingness to compromise reached its limits.”<br />The change comes with Bild grappling with sharply declining readership, a trend seen to a degree across the German newspaper industry.<br />At issue, German media reported, was a dispute between Ms. Koch, 40, and Julian Reichelt, who heads all Bild titles.<br />“When two people don’t harmonize professionally, it can be temporarily compensated by compromise,”<br />Ms. Koch wrote in an email to her colleagues, which was then leaked to German news organizations.
