Profil (magazine)

Profil, (stylized in all lowercase) is an Austrian weekly news magazine published in German and based in Vienna. It was founded as a monthly magazine and has been in circulation since 1970. The magazine is sometimes considered the Austrian counterpart to Der Spiegel. In 2008 the magazine was described as the “most important Austrian news magazine”.

History and profile
profil was founded in 1970 by Oscar Bronner, who also founded the magazine trend and the daily newspaper Der Standard. The magazine is headquartered in Vienna.

The first edition of profil came out as a monthly on 7 September 1970. Starting in October 1972, it was published every two weeks and from January 1974 every week. In 2001 profil became part of the publishing company NEWS. In 1975 business magazine, ecco, merged with profil.

profil includes sections for Austria, abroad, economy, society, science, and culture. Glosses, caricatures, and letters to the editor are also published. In the mid-1980s it had an independent and liberal leaning. In the 2000s the magazine had a left liberal political stance. It targets Austria's intelligentsia. Both profil and trend initiated investigative journalism in the country. It was profil which revealed the Nazi past of Kurt Waldheim, former Austrian president. Investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin served as the political editor of profil. He uncovered the story about Kurt Waldheim's Nazi connection.

Christian Rainer succeeded Josef Votzi as publisher and editor-in-chief in 1998. The chief editorial staff consisted of Sven Gächter, Stefan Janny, and Herbert Lackner.

Restructuring 2022/2023
In December 2022 it was announced that Richard Grasl would also become profile managing director in addition to his journalistic work for the Kurier. On the same day it was announced that Christian Rainer would end his role as editor-in-chief and publisher of Profil. Due to Grasl's appointment, the editorial team felt compelled to publicly emphasize the magazine's "untouchable journalistic independence". At the same time, management reported three profile editors to the works council for termination.

Editorial GmbH led by Grasl became the new publisher in January 2023. The new editor-in-chief has been Anna Thalhammer since March 1, 2023.

The economics department head and deputy editor-in-chief Michael Nikbakhsh also left the magazine in this context. He was offered the opportunity to run Kurier and Profil 's planned investigative academy as a self-employed person. Even before the academy started, Nikbakhsh “irrevocably” resigned from the leadership in February 2023. He developed a program for the academy and presented it to Richard Grasl, Martina Salomon and Anna Thalhammer at a meeting. According to Nikbakhsh, they had begun “in all seriousness” to classify intended speakers “according to suspected or supposed party-political affiliation”. Salomon explained that it was important to her that “not only leftists” appeared. Those mentioned contradict Nikbakhsh's account.

Circulation
The circulation of profil was 72,000 copies in 1985. In 1993, the magazine had a circulation of more than 100,000 copies.

The weekly had a circulation of 76,000 copies in 2003 and 78,000 copies in the first quarter of 2004. In 2006, the magazine had a readership of 6%, being second to NEWS magazine. The circulation of the magazine was 251,000 copies in 2007. Its circulation for the first half of 2008 was 59,124 copies. The 2010 circulation of profil was 93,000 copies. The circulation of the magazine during the first half of 2013 was down to 71,033 copies.