News agency dpa to relocate its main desks in Berlin

Nov 3, 2009, 14:36 GMT

   Hamburg - Germany's leading news agency, dpa, is to relocate its main editorial operations next summer to a single centralized location in Berlin, it said Tuesday.

   The German Press Agency dpa, which has had most of its senior editors in the port-city of Hamburg since 1949, said it had agreed to rent 3,500 square metres of office space in the capital to house about 300 staff.

   The wire service had announced earlier this year that it would combine its main editorial desks, currently in Hamburg, its picture desk, currently in Frankfurt, and its Berlin reporters at a single news room in the capital.

   The dpa English Service, which already has its headquarters in Berlin, will be a part of the new multimedia news room. The target date for the relocation is June or July next year.

   dpa operates a 24-hour-a-day news service in German, English and other languages.

   'This will the first time in the agency's history that the main desks will all operate from the same site,' said Wilm Herlyn, editor in chief.

   Deputy editor in chief Wolfgang Buechner, who is designated to take over the agency next January, said staff had 'already begun relocating mentally' to Berlin.

   Germany chose Berlin as its national capital after East and West Germany reunified in 1990, and the parliament moved there in 1999. Major German organizations have been moving to the capital since.

   The new office will be at a complex of buildings where the Axel Springer company edits its daily newspapers including Bild and Die Welt, located in a downtown district where various German news media have operated for decades.

   The agency's main business office, sales team and technology division will continue to be located in the German city of Hamburg.