About Berliner Morgenpost

Berliner Morgenpost

The Berliner Morgenpost is a German daily newspaper based in Berlin, where it ranks among the most-read dailies in the capital. Founded in 1898 by Leopold Ullstein, it is one of the great historic names of Berlin journalism — a paper that began as a one-pfennig popular daily and evolved into a serious broadsheet covering the reunited capital, surviving empire, republic, dictatorship, division, and reunification along the way. Owned since 2013 by the Funke Mediengruppe, it appears daily in print and digital formats, with a tabloid edition added in 2016. Its editor-in-chief is Peter Schink (since 2024), and its website is morgenpost.de.

Overview

The Berliner Morgenpost — "Morgenpost" or "MoPo" to its readers — is Berlin's second most-read daily newspaper, competing in one of Europe's most crowded local press markets with Der Tagesspiegel, the Berliner Zeitung, and the tabloid B.Z. Published in broadsheet format (with the tabloid version available since 2016), it covers Berlin city politics, the surrounding Brandenburg region, national and international news, sports, and culture, with a strong emphasis on the local journalism that is its reason for being.

In 2009 the paper sold about 145,500 copies with an estimated 322,000 readers; like all Berlin dailies it has lost print circulation since, while building its digital audience. In 2012 the European Newspapers Congress named it European Newspaper of the Year in the regional newspaper category.

History

An Ullstein founding

The Berliner Morgenpost was founded in 1898 by Leopold Ullstein — more precisely, by his three eldest sons, who launched it as a popular daily priced at a single pfennig, deliberately targeting a mass readership. The strategy was pioneering for German popular journalism: where the established papers served the bourgeoisie by subscription, the Morgenpost chased the workers and clerks of imperial Berlin through street sales. It worked — the paper's circulation grew to 600,000, making it the largest daily in Germany at the time.

The Ullstein publishing house, which also produced the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, the B.Z., and the Vossische Zeitung, made the Morgenpost part of the greatest press empire of its era. Leopold Ullstein, born in 1826 in Fürth to Jewish parents, had built the company from a paper wholesaler into a publishing dynasty; his five sons all entered the firm, dividing its management among themselves. The Morgenpost's success — 600,000 copies, the largest German daily — funded the empire's expansion into magazines, books, news services, and even film studios. The paper chronicled Berlin through the Wilhelmine boom, the First World War, the Weimar Republic's turbulence, and the Nazi era, when the Ullstein properties — a Jewish-owned enterprise — were expropriated and "Aryanized."

Springer and Funke

After the war the paper was rebuilt, and in 1959 Axel Springer — who had taken over the Ullstein publishing house — acquired the Morgenpost along with B.Z. Under Springer the paper became part of the dominant West Berlin press group, serving the walled city's appetite for local news through the Cold War decades. Its editors-in-chief through the Springer era included Heinz Köster (1960–1972), Wolfgang Kryszohn, Johannes Otto, Bruno Waltert (1988–1996), and Carsten Erdmann (2004–2018), who led the paper for fourteen years.

In 2013 Springer sold the Morgenpost to the Funke Mediengruppe of Essen, as part of Springer's strategic retreat from regional print toward digital — a transaction in which Springer divested its regional newspapers (the Morgenpost, the Hamburger Abendblatt, and others) to focus on its national brands and digital growth. The sale was portrayed by Spiegel Online as a newspaper giant turning its back on journalism, but for the Morgenpost it meant a new owner specialized in regional papers: Funke, built from the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of Essen, had grown into one of Germany's great regional press houses, with the scale to sustain local journalism that Springer no longer wanted. Christine Richter led the paper as editor-in-chief from 2018 to 2023; Peter Schink took over in 2024.

Under Funke, the paper's non-regional sections have been produced since May 2015 by the group's central newsroom in Berlin, while the Berlin pages remain the product of the local newsroom — a division of labor typical of modern regional publishing, in which expensive national and foreign coverage is pooled across titles while local identity is preserved. In 2016 a tabloid version of the Morgenpost was launched, giving readers a choice of formats and acknowledging the drift of reader preferences toward handier sizes. The European Newspaper of the Year award in 2012, in the regional category, had already recognized the paper's design quality in its final Springer years.

Content and Programming

The Morgenpost's print edition leads with Berlin: city politics, the districts, transport, housing, schools, and the cultural life of the capital. The Brandenburg pages cover the surrounding state, while national and international news — produced with the Funke central newsroom — provides the broader context. Sports coverage, particularly of Hertha BSC and 1. FC Union Berlin, is a staple, as are the service and lifestyle pages.

The paper's journalism has traditionally been politically centrist, avoiding the sharper ideological profiles of its competitors — a positioning that suits a paper aiming at the broad Berlin middle. Its investigative and campaigning journalism on Berlin issues — from the BER airport debacle, the capital's seemingly endless airport construction saga, to the housing crisis that dominates the city's politics — has periodically set the city's agenda and forced responses from the Berlin Senate.

Coverage and Audience

The Berliner Morgenpost is read overwhelmingly in Berlin, where it is the second most-read daily. Its audience is the city's broad middle: commuters, families, and longtime Berliners who want their city explained to them each morning — the readers who sustained the one-pfennig paper of 1898 and who sustain its digital edition today. The 2009 figures of 145,500 sold copies and 322,000 readers have declined with the print market, but the paper retains a loyal subscription base, and its digital reach on morgenpost.de extends well beyond the print footprint.

The paper's Berlin-centrism is its defining commercial trait: in a media market where national papers chase national stories, the Morgenpost's competitive advantage is its density of local reporting — the district-level journalism that no national title can replicate.

Ownership

The Berliner Morgenpost is owned by the Funke Mediengruppe, one of Germany's largest regional publishing groups, headquartered in Essen. Funke acquired the paper from Axel Springer in 2013. The editor-in-chief is Peter Schink. The paper operates from Berlin, with its local newsroom producing the Berlin pages and the Funke central newsroom supplying national and international content.

Digital Presence

The website morgenpost.de is the paper's digital flagship, offering continuously updated Berlin news, an e-paper edition with interactive features for smartphones, tablets, and PCs, and newsletters tailored to the capital. The paper is active on social media, where its Berlin-focused reporting — traffic, weather, crime, local politics — finds a large audience. Under Funke the digital operation has been integrated into the group's regional digital strategy, balancing the Morgenpost's Berlin identity against shared technology and commercial infrastructure. The 2016 launch of the tabloid print edition and the continued investment in the e-paper reflect a dual strategy: serving the remaining print loyalists while building the digital readership that will determine the paper's future. For a paper that has chronicled Berlin since 1898, the digital turn is the latest reinvention in a long history of them.