Farewell after 320 years to the printed Wiener Zeitung, one of the oldest newspapers in the world
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“116,840 days, 3,839 months, 320 years, 12 presidents, 10 emperors, 2 republics, 1 newspaper”. The large numbers on the white background of the front page of Friday 30 June close the door on the glorious history of the Viennese newspaper Wiener Zeitungwho came out that day for thelast time in print edition. What it is considered to be one of the oldest newspapers in the world it is no longer available at newsstands and other points of sale, but only online.
Goodbye to paper, e farewell also to a large part of the editorial staff and editorial structure: 63 contracts have been rescinded, including that of the director. There are only 20 people left in the editorial team who have to create an editorial product that “has the task of promoting understanding of political issues, consolidating democratic awareness and strengthening the will to participate in politics”, as the director told the Austrian news agency general. Daily news will be deliberately avoided and other newspapers will not be seen as competitors.
According to the manager, the goal is to score points with “market-oriented journalism data journalism“, but doubts as to whether it will find a niche in the modest Austrian online media market are strong.
How did the closure of the printed edition come about? We need to retrace the history of the newspaper founded in 1703 on the initiative of Emperor Leopold I of Habsburg as “Wiennerisches Diarium” and then renamed Wiener Zeitung in 1780, which already made its commitment to objectivity at its debut: the first issue that was launched under the banner of “the news without any oratorical or poetic embellishment”.
In 1857 the newspaper was acquired by the Austrian state, which is still its publishereven if the property is a limited liability company. There Wiener Zeitung is the newspaper of the Republic of Austria which has always hit the newsstands except in the war years from 1940 to 1945 and which has always maintained its independent vision, as much as possible in a country like Austria. He also did it in the years of Sebastian Kurz’s stationery inculture, when he didn’t have it never given up on critical stories of what was happening in the palaces of federal and city politics.
Last fall the government has decided to close the Wiener Zeitung in its current form. And a corresponding law was approved by the National Council in April. It wasn’t the modest circulation, about 8,000 copies on weekdays that doubled on weekends, that led to the drastic decision, but the fact that the state stopped the flow of financial life that kept it going. There Wiener Zeitung in fact it was also the Official Gazette of the Austrian Republicevery week in his “Amstblatt” he published state announcements, bankruptcies, company balance sheets, convenings of shareholders’ meetings, changes to the commercial register, obviously all for a fee, in what was a kind of life insurance for the newspaper.
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However, following a directive from the European Union, everything has changed, these types of ads now end up on a new online platformand the cash-in sure of Wiener Zeitung vanishes into thin air. But instead of devising an alternative funding formula for his newspaper, the Austrian government decided to shut it down. The protests of the editorial staff and of civil society, of diplomats and intellectuals, even of the President of the Republic, were of no avail, the paper story of the newspaper ends here.
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