New Ruhr newspaper

Neue Ruhr Zeitung Neue Rhein Zeitung
description	German daily newspaper
publishing company	Newspaper publisher Niederrhein GmbH & Co. KG
First edition	July 13, 1946
Frequency of publication	Monday to Saturday
Sold edition	96,912 copies
Editor-in-chief	Manfred Lachniet
editor	Heinrich Meyer
Web link	nrz.de
ZDB	987376-4

The NRZ is a regional newspaper appearing in the west of North Rhine-Westphalia . It appears in the western Ruhr area under the name Neue Ruhr Zeitung and on the Lower Rhine as Neue Rhein Zeitung . The circulation is not shown separately within the newspapers that belong to the Funke media group , formerly WAZ media group, in North Rhine-Westphalia . According to a media report, the sold circulation in July 2009 was 121,125 copies, but should be significantly lower in 2015 in view of the well above-average decrease in circulation for the entire group.

history

The NRZ on the treadmill in the printing house

After the Second World War , Dietrich Oppenberg received a license to publish a daily newspaper from the British military administration. One of the three co-licensees was the SPD politician and later mayor of Essen, Wilhelm Nieswandt . According to the British principle of external pluralism - several competing newspapers with dedicated ideological orientations - the license for a social democratic newspaper was granted. The first edition of the NRZ appeared on July 13, 1946. Oppenberg remained editor of the newspaper until his death in 2000. Heinrich Meyer was his successor .

The NRZ initially saw itself as a newspaper primarily for the major cities on the Rhine and Ruhr and, in addition to the current distribution area, appeared between 1951 and 1974 as the successor to the social democratic Rheinische Zeitung , which was discontinued for economic reasons, also in Cologne , Bonn , Aachen , Leverkusen and in the Cologne districts of that time -Land and Bergheim (today Rhein-Erft-Kreis ). Due to the widespread distribution with relatively small market shares, strong cost disadvantages compared to the competition have arisen over the decades. The newspaper also suffered from the common phenomenon that many advertisers only use the largest local newspaper. After withdrawing from part of the distribution area, the publisher decided in 1975 to sell it to its largest competitor, the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ).

The WAZ had taken over the Westfalenpost (WP) and the Westfälische Rundschau (WR) under similar circumstances . The newspaper group WAZ was formed from the four newspapers . In contrast to what was customary with acquisitions up until then, the newspaper group continued to run the smaller titles independently of the journalists. The advertising parts of the newspapers appearing at the same time, however, are identical, since the titles are marketed as an economic unit. Through this "WAZ model" the journalistic diversity was largely maintained, while the group secured a lucrative economic monopoly in many cities in the Ruhr area.

In terms of corporate law, like all WAZ titles, the NRZ is organized in a company founded especially for it. It is the only publication from Zeitungsverlag Niederrhein GmbH & Co. Essen KG. The KG belongs to 89.4 percent of the Funke media group, which is now active throughout Europe and in all media. The remaining shares are held by the original Oppenberg publishing house, Rheinisch-Westfälische Verlagsgesellschaft mbH.

Edition

The circulation of the Neue Ruhr Zeitung is reported by the Funke Mediengruppe only together with the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), Westfalenpost (WP) and the Westfälische Rundschau (WR). The newspapers have lost a lot of circulation in recent years. The circulation sold has fallen by an average of 5.6% per year over the past 10 years. Last year it decreased by 6.1%. It is currently 442,946 copies. The share of subscriptions in the circulation sold is 92.5 percent.

Development of the number of copies sold

Distribution area and competition

NRZ newspaper machine

The NRZ has 13 local editorial offices. The NRZ appears as the Neue Ruhr Zeitung in the major cities in the Ruhr area - in Essen , the headquarters of the central editorial office, in Duisburg with the district editorial office in Rheinhausen, Mülheim an der Ruhr and in Oberhausen . In the wider distribution area it appears as the Neue Rhein Zeitung . There are editorial offices in the Wesel district in Dinslaken , responsible for Dinslaken, Voerde and Hünxe , in Wesel , responsible for Wesel, Hamminkeln and Schermbeck , in Rheinberg , responsible for Rheinberg, Alpen , Sonsbeck and Xanten , and in Moers , responsible for Moers, Kamp- Lintfort , Neukirchen-Vluyn , Rheurdt and Issum . In the Kleve district , the Neue Rhein Zeitung is represented on the left bank of the Rhine with an editorial office in the district town of Kleve . The cities and communities Kleve, Goch , Kranenburg , Bedburg-Hau , Kalkar , Uedem , Weeze and Kevelaer are covered. The editorial department responsible for the part of the Kleve district on the right bank of the Rhine is based in Emmerich ; Rees and the city of Isselburg in the Borken district are looked after from here . There is also the Neue Rhein Zeitung in Düsseldorf , from where the municipalities in the southern part of the Mettmann district are also processed: Hilden , Langenfeld , Monheim and Erkrath .

Together with its sister company WAZ, the NRZ has monopoly positions or vast market shares in the Ruhr area cities. The editions of the two titles are not shown separately; as a rule, as at the time of the merger, the NRZ is the title with the significantly smaller reach. In Düsseldorf and in the more rural areas of the Lower Rhine, the Rheinische Post (RP) holds the vast majority of the market shares. The NRZ is positioned here by the WAZ group against the competing publisher.

The advance of the NRZ into former monopoly areas of the RP caused quite a stir in the industry, albeit on a small scale. Spatial expansion of the market by regional newspaper publishers has been very rare in Germany for decades because, given the low tendency of daily newspaper subscribers to switch, it is hardly possible to gain significant market shares. In addition, the newspaper publishers fear counter-attacks by competitors on “their” territory. In the northern Ruhr area it was not until 2006 that the WAZ and Ruhr Nachrichten withdrew from minority positions after a long competition and left the local monopoly to the competitor, allegedly without consultation.

editorial staff

The first editor-in-chief of the NRZ was Erich Brost . However, he left the company as early as 1947 in order to found WAZ with Jakob Funke a year later . The best-known editor-in-chief was Jens Feddersen , who, as one of the longest-serving editors-in-chief, headed the editorial office from 1961 to 1993. Feddersen's successor was the former diplomatic correspondent for the news magazine Spiegel , Richard Kiessler . From December 1, 2007 to July 1, 2013, the former WDR company spokesman and journalist Rüdiger Oppers acted as editor-in-chief. His successor has been his former deputy Manfred Lachniet .

The capital city office of the NRZ in Bonn's tulip field was managed by Hilde Purwin from 1952 to 1984 , then by Miguel Sanches until the move to Berlin .

In June 2009 the concept of a central editorial office, initiated by WAZ editor-in-chief Ulrich Reitz, was launched. Accordingly, the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , the Neue Rhein / Neue Ruhr Zeitung and the Westfälische Rundschau receive their national pages ( coat ) as far as possible from a news desk at the corporate headquarters in Essen. Once a week, the NRZ as well as the other WAZ daily newspapers include the program guide rtv .

Jörg Bartel, who died in 2015, was the long-time head of the NRZ's feature section .

Web links

• Official website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Steffen Grimberg: Readers do not like uniform porridge . In: taz , August 21, 2009
2. ↑ Funke-Mediengruppe Funke-Medien-G 850 (WAZ + NRZ + WP + WR) + IKZ (Mon-Sat) , accessed on February 6, 2015
3. ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung : WAZ Group. After the mines die the newspapers , January 28, 2013, accessed on February 6, 2015: “While the German daily newspapers complain about a decline of 2.2 percent per year on average, it is four to five percent for the newspapers of the WAZ Group . "
4. ↑ Essen elephant wedding . In: Die Zeit , No. 46/1975
5. ^ Ownership and ownership structure of Zeitungsverlag Niederrhein GmbH & Co. Essen KG. Media database of the Commission to determine the concentration in the media sector (KEK)
6. ↑ according to IVW ( online )
7. ↑ according to IVW , second quarter 2020, Mon-Sat ( details and quarterly comparison on ivw.eu )
8. ↑ according to IVW , fourth quarter in each case ( details on ivw.eu )
9. ↑ Market shares of newspaper groups and associations in NRW  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) Media data from Big City ACN (including Rheinische Post), 2008  
10. ↑ WAZ is dismantling . In: taz , June 30, 2006