[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).