After fighting off one foreign takeover, staff at the paper that broke the news of the second world war might have been expected to react badly when meeting their potential new German owners on Monday. Instead, journalists at the Telegraph felt “optimistic”, “enthusiastic” and even “cautiously pleased” – one called a takeover by media conglomerate Axel Springer the “best possible outcome”.

The reason for this Panglossian response is partly hope that Axel Springer and its boss, Mathias Döpfner, might genuinely be keen on journalism, and partly exhaustion at the end of a wildly convoluted three-year takeover battle. The fight says a lot about the state of the print news business – upended by technological and economic headwinds yet still seen as an attractive bauble for rich power players and important as a home for journalism. For how much longer this persists could well depend on what Axel Springer and its part-owner and boss Döpfner do with it.

First, a brief recap on the torrid history of one of Britain’s oldest papers since the start of this century. Axel Springer was runner-up in the last auction of the Telegraph Media Group in 2004, when it was pipped to the post by the British Brexit-loving Barclay brothers. Congratulated for not really being around much, the Barclays banked Telegraph profits while using the papers as collateral for enormous debts.

When the banks eventually seized the papers, the Barclay family helped arrange a back-room deal........

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