World’s oldest national newspaper stops hard copy print without advert cash
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Wiener Zeitung, a newspaper based in Vienna, printed is last daily edition on Friday nearly 320 years after it began in 1703, driven off the newsstands because advert revenue has dwindled and cannot sustain the hard copy.
The world’s oldest national newspaper has now gone solely online after a recent law change meant it had ceased to be profitable as a print product.
The law, passed in April by Austria’s coalition government, ended a legal requirement for companies to pay to publish public announcements in the print edition of the newspaper, terminating Wiener Zeitung’s role as an official gazette.
This change resulted in an estimated €18 million (£15 million) loss of income for the publisher, according to Der Spiegel, and has forced the paper to cut 63 jobs, including reducing its editorial staff from 55 to 20.
The newspaper will continue to publish online and is hoping to distribute a monthly print edition, although that plan is reportedly still in development.
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Seen out 12 Presidents, 10 Kaisers, 2 republics
The Guardian (UK) reports Wiener Zeitung, which is owned by the Austrian government but is editorially independent, began publishing in August 1703 and has seen out 12 Presidents, 10 Kaisers and two republics.
In its first edition, it said it would provide a straightforward account of the news “without any oratory or poetic gloss”.
In 1768 it reported on a concert starring an “especially talented” 12-year-old. His name was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
When Austria was defeated in the first world war, the paper published a special edition with the abdication letter of the last Habsburg emperor, Kaiser Karl.
In its last daily print edition on June 30, it ran an editorial blaming the government’s new law for the end of its print run and said: “These are stormy times for quality journalism … On more and more platforms, serious content vies for attention with fake news, cat videos and conspiracy theories.”
In April its circulation was just 20,000 on weekdays, although this figure doubled at weekends.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was one its final interviewees, along with the former Austrian chancellors Franz Vranitzky and Wolfgang Schüssel.
EU Commission Vice-President Věra Jourová told the Austrian news agency APA that she was “not happy with the situation” at the newspaper. “I think the Wiener Zeitung played a good role in informing people over the years,” she said.
During its three centuries of printing, the newspaper had only one forced break. After Austria was incorporated into Hitler’s Germany, the paper was shut down by the Nazis in 1939. In 1945, while Austria was still under allied occupation, it began printing again.
The title of world’s oldest newspaper is contested by the Gazzetta di Mantova, a local newspaper that was first published in 1664. The London Gazette, an official gazette of the UK government that does not report the news, dates back to 1665.
The world’s oldest surviving national newspaper is now thought to be the German publication Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung, which was first published in 1705.