Monday, December 8, 2025

FUNKE Regional Media creates new leadership role: Carsten Groß becomes Managing Director Digital Publishing as of February 1, 2026, to accelerate digital growth across the organisation

FUNKE Regional Media is further accelerating its digital transformation by creating the new role of Managing Director Digital Publishing. The position will be taken over by Carsten Groß on February 1, 2026, marking his return to FUNKE, where he previously served as Chief Product Officer until 2023. In this capacity, Groß will report directly to Christoph Rüth, the Managing Director responsible for the regional media division at FUNKE.

Rüth describes Groß as “one of the most strategically minded digital thinkers in the German regional media landscape,” highlighting his extensive experience at FUNKE and his strong leadership capabilities. His return is expected to further accelerate the company’s digital transformation and strengthen the alignment across all digital business areas.

Within this newly established leadership level, Groß will create strategic coherence across all units essential to digital success – including product, technology, editorial teams, user markets, sales, new business, data and M&A. He will directly lead the product, technology, new business and data divisions and assume responsibility for inorganic digital growth across all journalistic activities of the regional media brands.

A key part of his mandate is to identify successful pilots across individual brands or test markets and scale them across all regional media titles. This will be done in close collaboration with the newly established Editorial Development Unit led by Anne Krum and Cordula Schmitz. In addition, Groß will continuously assess the impact of AI technologies on the digital business model and ensure the organisation leverages these opportunities to drive digital growth.

By establishing the Managing Director Digital Publishing role, FUNKE continues its organisational development – shifting from a regionally structured model toward a product-oriented organisation with clear accountability for the performance of digital journalistic offerings. The strategic goal is a future in which journalism and all required resources can be financed entirely through digital revenue.