I've seen a few references this morning to an apparently distinctive practice in German newspapers under the Empire and Weimar Republic: the institution of the Sitz-Redakteur, a person maintained on staff solely for the purpose of serving jail sentences the newspaper gets if sued for libel.
It shows up in a few contemporaneous English-language works, such as this edition of The Literary Digest which says, "most of the papers which publish insulting articles keep on hand a Sitz-Redakteur, a person whose name graces the columns as that of the responsible editor, but who is often only a messenger." A 1968 book discussing the Weimar era calls the "Sitzredakteur" position "time-honored."
Sitzredkateur was the person who was/is the person who is listed with their full name in a newspapers "Impressum" (imprint for UK newspapers and in some ways similar to the masthead in US publications) as responsible for the content of the published media. This is a to this day mandated legal necessity in German speaking countries for newspapers, books, and even blogs.
Sitzredakteur was the colloquial name for the people newspapers listed when they wanted to protect the owner of a newspapers and its head editor back when censorship still existed resp. when something like Majestätsbeleidigung (offending the monarch) was still a crime in Germany. People who worked for the newspaper but were more expandable than the head editor were listed in the imprint so that if legal trouble arose, they would go to jail and not someone essential to the operation of the paper.
While this had already become something papers did during the time of the censorship laws in the German lands during the Metternich years, it persisted after censorship was abolished in the German Empire in 1874, most notably for Catholic Publications during the "Kulturkampf" (the Bismarckian Campaign against the influence of the Catholic Church) and the Sozialistengesetzgebung (the laws intended to curb socialism in Germany) in the latter half of the 19th century.
While some papers apparently employed invalids from the Franco-Prussian and later the First World War as Sitzredakteure (they were usually hired as printers for the paper), the socialist Vorwärts for years employed young journalists who started their jobs there as Sitzredakteur as a initiation right, e.g. Kurt Eisner, later USPD leader of the Bavarian Soviet Republic had served as Sitzredaktuer at Vorwärts in 1892.
Most cases relevant to the Sitzredakteure were offenses to the statute of the Monarch of Majestätsbeleidigung. In his article on the subject Oliver Stenzel counts 12 196 indictments and 9212 sentences against people for Majestätsbeleidigung during the years of Wilhelm II reign (1888–1918). These however include very few sentences handed down against satire magazines like Kladderatatsch and Simplicissimus and more against socialist papers like "Der wahre Jakob" (where one printer was Sitzredakteur).
Th practice essentially ended with the total liberalization of press laws following 1945 and even Weimar saw comparatively few cases of a press editor being sentenced to jail. With the continued existence of the Impressum however some form of the position of Sitzredakteur still persists for all papers in German speaking countries still have to name the person responsible for content – these days however, it's mostly the Chef vom Dienst, meaning the managing editor.