The Wiener Zeitung (translated as “Vienna Gazette”) decided not to publish daily editions because it was no longer profitable as a print product. The law, which was passed by Austria’s coalition government in April, removed the legal requirement that companies pay to run ads in the print edition of the newspaper, eliminating the role of the Wiener Zeitung as the country’s official gazette. According to Der Spiegel, this change meant a loss of 18 million euros for the publisher and forced the newspaper to cut 63 jobs in the group, including reducing the editorial staff from 55 to 20 people.
The newspaper will continue to be published online and hopes to distribute a monthly print edition, although this plan is reportedly still in the works. Austrian government-owned but editorially independent, the Wiener Zeitung began publication in August 1703 and survived 12 presidents, 10 kaisers, and two republics. In its first edition, the publication’s journalists assured that they would provide a direct report on the news “without eloquence or poetic brilliance.” In 1768, a newspaper reported a concert with a “particularly gifted” 12-year-old boy. His name was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
When Austria was defeated in World War I, the newspaper published a special edition with a letter of abdication from the last Habsburg emperor, Kaiser Karl. In its last daily print edition, the publication ran an editorial blaming a new government law for reducing its circulation.
These are tumultuous times for quality journalism. On a growing number of platforms, serious content is competing for attention with fake news, cat videos, and conspiracy theories.
In April, the Wiener Zeitung’s weekday circulation was only 20,000, though that number doubled on weekends. Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of the last interlocutors of the publication, together with the former Austrian chancellors Franz Vranitzky and Wolfgang Schüssel.
For three centuries, the newspaper had only one forced break. After Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany, the Nazis shut down the publication in 1939. And in 1945 it went into print again. The local Gazzetta di Mantova, which was first published in 1664, is fighting for the title of the oldest newspaper in the world. The London Gazette, the official non-news newspaper of the British government, dates from 1665. The oldest national newspaper in the world is now believed to be the German edition Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung, first published in 1705.
At the same time, more and more world publications are published online. Earlier it was reported about the completion of the publication in Australia of the print version of newspapers owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The British newspaper the Independent and the American magazine Newsweek were also published online.
