Thomas Schunck

Thomas Schunck (born April 12, 1955 in Münster ) is a German journalist. Until the beginning of his retirement on October 1, 2019, he was the spokesman for the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in Kiel / Schleswig-Holstein. Before that he was editor-in-chief of the newspaper publishing house Schwerin with the newspapers Schweriner Volkszeitung , Norddeutsche Latest Nachrichten and Der Prignitzer , before that he was chief of the service and representative of an editor-in - chief at the Schleswig-Holstein newspaper publisher (sh: z) in Flensburg . Today, Schunck works as a freelance editor and author in print and online.

Career

From 1981, after studying and taking a state examination (German language and literature, among others) at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster, Schunck completed his journalistic training (traineeship) at the Münsterschen Zeitung , where he was editor and reporter in the Münster city department. In 1987 he followed the call to the then Flensburger Zeitungsverlag (FZV) and worked as a reporter in Flensburg. In 1989 he took over the department management of the Flensburg city editorial office and from 1993 headed the news center of the publishing house as head of the service and representative of an editor-in-chief, which operates as Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag (sh: z) after acquisitions of smaller publishers. In 2000 the editorial team received the Konrad Adenauer Prize for the long-term multimedia history project "Century Story".

In 2005, Schunck took over the editorial management of the newspaper publishing house Schwerin (ZVS) as editor-in-chief, which sh: z had taken over from Burda-Verlag. Schunck rebuilt the editorial team, installed the news desk, where print and online editors write newspapers across departmental boundaries, and introduced a new editorial system with the publisher. This restructuring was associated with a considerable reorganization and thus also personnel reductions, but at the same time led to a widely recognized increase in the journalistic quality of the publisher's newspapers. He received several awards with the editorial team, including the 2005 special award from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation for the magazine “Trust in the Future” on the German-German public holiday on October 3rd. The publisher's newspapers also received several European Newspaper Awards for excellent topic presentation and excellent newspaper layout.

In 2004, Schunck was appointed to the German Press Council and until 2006 worked for three years on this self-regulatory body of the German print press, which is dedicated to ethical and technical questions of journalism and criticizes violations of the rules of decent journalistic work. In January 2009, as co-organizer of the Federal Agency for Civic Education , Schunck was the driving force behind the newspaper congress “Print times online equals quality to the power of two” in Schwerin, which was opened by Chancellor Angela Merkel .

In December 2009 he followed the call to the Ministry of Education and Culture (later "Ministry of Education and Science", "Ministry of School and Vocational Training" and today "Ministry of Education, Science and Culture") and left the newspaper publisher Schwerin, who wanted to set up more locally than before and planned further staff reductions.

Books

Thomas Schunck is co-editor of the books:

• Vision MV - Ideas for our country ( ISBN 3-00-018206-3 )
• World class - 100 anecdotes from MV ( ISBN 978-3-356-01250-7 )

Web links

• Thomas Schunck at the Local Journalism Forum 2005