As someone who used to work at @SPIEGELONLINE's English shop, here's my two cents on the #Relotius #SpiegelGate affair: Spiegel has always worshipped the "Edelfeder" fancypants wordsmith to the detriment of its journalism. Each issue could be half as thick and say twice as much.
What the mag needs is stronger editors who tell Mr. Edelfeder: "Great story, Lutz. Now cut out 2000 words of fluff and back all this flowery crap up. Don't bother to file until you've done that." Instead, Mr. Edelfeder gets to write whatever the hell he (it's always a he) wants.
Case in point: A former DC correspondent (who later became editor-in-chief) had to be called out for pinching a quote without attribution from Time or somewhere while reporting from Washington. Just sloppy. Or lazy. But stronger editing would have caught it before translation.
And if you let stuff like that slide, or even consider it acceptable because Mr. Edelfeder paints such pretty pictures with his fine, fine prose, then how are you going to stop someone actively lying and making stuff up? Clearly, you're not.
