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overview
holdings
landmarks
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overview
This profile considers the Westdeutsche Allgemaine Zeitung
(WAZ) group.
It covers -
introduction
WAZ is the second-largest German newspaper publisher -
after Axel Springer - and
has interests in 25 newspapers and 50 magazines in six
central European countries. Overall it has around 500
titles.
evolution of the group
Erich Brost (1903-96) published the Social Democratic
party's daily Danziger Volksstimme and was a member
of the Diet in the Free City of Danzig in the 1930s before
fleeing the Nazis in 1936. While an emigre he earned his
living in Poland, Finland, Sweden and the UK. In 1948,
after his return to Germany, with support from Jacob Funke,
he founded the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
(WAZ), now the largest circulation paper in the country.
The Essen-based group expanded through acquisition of
key regional papers across West Germany and strategic
investments (often in partnership with Bertelsmann),
such as a stake in what is now RTL
(sold in 2000) and in non-media activity such as a 25%
stake in mail order giant Otto Versand. WAZ's 28 daily
newspapers in Germany had an aggregate daily sale of 4.3
million copies as of 2004. Titles include the Westfälische
Rundschau, Neue Ruhr
Zeitung, Neue Rhein Zeitung,Thüringische
Landeszzeitung, Westfalenpost and Ostthüringische
Zeitung.
At the end of the 1980s WAZ expanded into Austria through
acquisition of 49% of Media Print Austria, with the Kurier
and regional title Kärtner Tageszeitung,
50% of the tabloid Neuen KronenZeitung, and 13
regional radio stations. It is now the dominant newspaper
publisher in Austria. In the mid-1990s it joined Axel
Springer and other competitors in a drang nach osten
into Southeast Europe, primarily by paying small amounts
- typically a few million per title/group - for new underfunded
tabloids in the former Soviet bloc.
As of 2004 it had five regional papers in Hungary, several
in Bulgaria, stakes in leading Romanian titles and operations
in Croatia, Yugoslavia and Macedonia
studies
With the exception of "To live, you have to be
well-informed": Erich Brost, Danzig editor, man of
Resistance, publisher and editor-in-chief of the "Westdeutsche
Allgemeine Zeitung" (Bonn: Dietz 1999) by Marek
Andrzejewski & Hubert Rinklake there have been no
major English-language studies of Brost or the WAZ group.
A perspective on continuities before and after 1945 is
provided by Die Herren Journalisten: Die Elite der
deutschen Presse nach 1945 (Munich: Beck 2002) by
Lutz Hachmeister & Friedemann Siering.
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