[ar0]

To be honest, I was quite surprised because I heard that Der Spiegel has an „extraordinary reputation“ in the U.S. for the first time today on HN.

I am German and even when I went to school (before the „life-sucking Internet“ from a comment below) there was the saying that all you could trust in Der Spiegel are the dates and numbers (although this article suggests even that might be too much).

IMHO, there are much better German-language news sources out there (Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Süddeutsche, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Brand Eins, to name just a few with differing political leanings).

[sverhagen]

I think in the Netherlands we generally look at Der Spiegel also as a respectable publication. The Dutch Wikipedia entry on it calls Der Spiegel a "moral authority", among other things.

[Tomte]

The reputation is about fact-checking, i.e. dates and numbers.

[ascar]

Fact-checking isn't just about dates and numbers, but about all facts presented in an article.

As a German I'm also surprised about that reputation. The Spiegel is somewhere between a serious newspaper (like FAZ, Süddeutsche or Zeit) and a tabloid (like Bild). Hunting for great headlines and stories, but not necessarily concerned with objective news reporting.

[zorked]

Not American, in my country Der Spiegel is assumed to be the media of record in Germany, just like the NYT in the US.

[ascar]

It's funny, because the Spiegel is a weekly magazine and the NYT a daily newspaper, which brings a lot of difference in the style of the articles. Th best German comparison to the NYT is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) oder Süddeutsche (SZ).