Isn't Der Spiegel a weekly release? Or when you say "front page" do you mean "of their website"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cable...
with El Pais, Le Mond, The Guardin and NYT.
For this very story: It has received some new presentation slides in the recent days that it's currently publishing. The FAZ and other German newspapers are referencing SPON for this particular story. So for this story SPON is the first/primary source.
And I think that using "on their front page" when talking about the website of a magazine is misleading, in part simply because it suggests magazine not website, and in part because being on the front page of their website really means absolutely nothing when it comes to importance - or at least, it means no more than saying "Spiegel wrote a story about it". The front page of their website is just the hub where they link off content as and when it gets published, both important and less important items.
Look at the table on the bottom [1]. Note that the data is a little bit older and Bild is yellow press and recently introduced a pay wall.
If a topic is prominent on the Spiegel homepage mainstream Germany will talk about it.
[1] http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=auto&tl=en&u=ht...
I mean, on Spiegel.de right now, sure the NSA story is at the top, but other items that could be described as being "on the front page" include BBC Nature: The man who lives with the grizzlies, F1: Hulkenberg Sauber team threatens to bankrupt and Jennifer Lopez in Turkmenistan, to pick out a few.
I wasn't complaining about the original comment, I was literally curious to check whether I had misunderstood the publishing schedule of the magazine, or whether it was just worded in a way that didn't quite make sense to me.