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WAZ Group

Overview

This profile considers the Westdeutsche Allgemaine Zeitung (WAZ) group.


It covers -

  • Introduction
  • Evolution of the group
  • Studies

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.