Alexandra Föderl-Schmid (born 30 January 1971)[1] is an Austrian journalist and deputy editor-in-chief of Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Born in Haslach an der Mühl, Upper Austria, Föderl-Schmid studied at the University of Salzburg,[2] followed by a doctorate in Communications Studies, also from the University of Salzburg.[3]
Föderl-Schmid began at Austrian newspaper Der Standard in 1990 and was the newspaper's Germany correspondent and Brussels-based European Union correspondent.
She served as editor-in-chief of Der Standard from 2007 until 2017.[4]
Föderl-Schmid ended her work for Der Standard at the end of August 2017. From the beginning of November 2017 until the end of June 2020, she was the correspondent for the Süddeutsche Zeitung in Israel. She has been Deputy Editor-in-Chief at SZ since 15 July 2020. She temporarily withdrew from day-to-day operations on 5 February 2024 pending clarification of the plagiarism allegations against her. According to these allegations, not only did her dissertation contain a number of plagiarised passages, but in the course of her professional career she had also taken text passages from the reports of other daily newspapers in numerous named articles without indicating this.[5] On 8 February 2024, the "SZ" editorial team announced that former "Spiegel" editor-in-chief Steffen Klusmann, the head of the German School of Journalism, Henriette Löwisch, and Eichstätt journalism professor Klaus Meier were to investigate the allegations.[6]
Her other activities include: