About Mittelbayerische Zeitung

Mittelbayerische Zeitung

The Mittelbayerische Zeitung is the regional daily newspaper of Regensburg and the Upper Palatinate — the paper of the Danube city that is also one of Bavaria's most history-laden: a UNESCO-listed old town, a Roman frontier, and the seat of the Imperial Diet for centuries. Published from the MZ-Medienhaus in Regensburg and owned since 2021 by the Mediengruppe Bayern (the Passauer Neue Presse group), it is the dominant paper of eastern Bavaria's Upper Palatinate region, appearing in 13 regional editions.

Overview

The Mittelbayerische Zeitung (MZ) is a subscription regional daily newspaper headquartered in Regensburg, in the Upper Palatinate of eastern Bavaria. Its publisher is the Mittelbayerische Zeitung GmbH, and its sold circulation is 70,495 copies (a 45.7 percent decline since 1998). On 1 January 2006 the MZ's printing operation became the independent subsidiary Mittelbayerisches Druckzentrum GmbH & Co. KG, and the print plant on Rathenaustraße in Harting — opened in 2010 after the 50-million-euro investment — is one of the region's major print sites. The publisher also produces the free advertising paper Rundschau am Wochenende with roughly 300,000 copies.

The MZ is the lead medium for most of the Upper Palatinate and adjacent northwestern Lower Bavaria — the region its name claims as "central Bavaria." The paper is part of the Mediengruppe Bayern GmbH, formerly the Verlagsgruppe Passau, and its publishing director and managing director is Simone Tucci-Diekmann; the editor-in-chief is Andrea Rieder. Its website is mittelbayerische.de, which has operated with a freemium paywall model since 2018.

History

The paper's founding belongs to the licensed-press generation: Karl Friedrich Esser received license number 5 from the American military government on 23 October 1945, authorizing him to publish a daily newspaper. The paper carried the title Mittelbayerische Zeitung – Regensburger Umschau and, because of paper shortages and a lack of specialist staff, could initially appear only once a week — a four-page edition with a circulation of 200,000 copies. It covered the entire area of Lower Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate, and the name Mittelbayerische Zeitung was derived from this coverage area: the region in the middle of Bavaria, so to speak. The publisher and printing works were located on Kumpfmühler Straße in Regensburg. As further licenses were issued to competing publishers, the MZ gradually lost almost all of Lower Bavaria and the northern half of the Upper Palatinate. From 1958 all editions of the MZ appeared six times a week. After Karl Friedrich Esser's death in 1961, his son Karl Heinz Esser took responsibility for the family company. In 1973 the publisher took over the Tages-Anzeiger, which had likewise appeared in Regensburg, ending local competition in the city.

The postwar decades were a long family-publisher era. In 1998, after 30 years, the publisher discontinued its own weekly Die Woche. A new print center on Margaretenstraße went into operation in 1993; in 2010 the publisher moved the printing plant to a greenfield site on Rathenaustraße in Regensburg's Harting district, investing some 50 million euros. Three years later, on 8 May 2013, the new publishing building — the MZ-Medienhaus at the Kumpfmühler bridge in Regensburg — was occupied, with 188 employees working there. In 2020 the publisher celebrated the MZ's 75th year of publication.

The end of the family era came in 2021: the MZ publishing house and its subsidiaries were taken over by the Mediengruppe Bayern, the publisher of the Passauer Neue Presse, after the founders' grandsons Peter and Thomas Esser sold the family property at the end of July 2021. The Federal Cartel Office cleared the takeover in October 2021. Since 2021 the Straubinger Tagblatt/Landshuter Zeitung media group has published a new regional daily in Regensburg — the Regensburger Zeitung — in direct competition with the acquired MZ, ending the paper's long near-monopoly in the city. In 2022 the publisher discontinued the monthly Wirtschaftszeitung for eastern Bavaria (published since 2010) and the free Wednesday advertising paper Rundschau.

Programming/Content

The MZ's content is the Upper Palatinate's daily life across 13 regional editions. The editions cover Regensburg city and the southern and northern districts of Regensburg, Hemau and the western district, Wörth, Nittenau and Bruck, Schwandorf with the Städterdreieck and Neunburg, the Vilstal and the southern district of Amberg-Sulzbach, Neumarkt with Parsberg, Velburg, Dietfurt, Beilngries, Berching, and Freystadt (as the Neumarkter Tagblatt), Kelheim with Abensberg and Neustadt, the Kötzting area, and the Bavarian Forest east and west (Bayerwaldecho Ost and Bayerwaldecho West).

The paper's journalism spans local news from this broad area, politics, business, culture, and sport — with the region's identity showing through in its coverage: the Upper Palatinate's beer culture (the publisher's book arm won the "Goldene BierIdee" award for its Oberpfälzer Bierführer), Regensburg's football (the now-discontinued Jahn app served the local club's supporters), and the region's business life. The newsroom has won multiple European Newspaper Awards of Excellence since 2007, and the Regensburg local desk took second place in the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung's German Local Journalism Prize in 2011. The MZ's free weekly Rundschau am Wochenende (roughly 300,000 copies) covers the same areas with advertising content.

Coverage & Audience

The Mittelbayerische Zeitung is the leading medium for the largest part of the Upper Palatinate and adjacent northwestern Lower Bavaria, with the publisher claiming a readership of 217,000. With 70,495 copies sold and a subscription share of 89.8 percent, it is a classic subscription-based regional paper with deep local roots. Its competitors are Der neue Tag from Weiden in the northern Upper Palatinate, the Straubinger Tagblatt/Landshuter Zeitung media group in the south and east, the Nürnberger Nachrichten with its Neumarkt local edition in the west, and, at greater distance, the Münchner Merkur with its local papers. The paper's readership is the Upper Palatinate's locally rooted, subscription-loyal population — from Regensburg's university city to the Bavarian Forest's small towns.

Ownership

Notably, the American military government deviated from its usual licensing practice by granting the MZ license to a single person — the Regensburg SPD politician Karl Friedrich Esser (1880–1961) — which the Historisches Lexikon Bayerns reads as a deliberate signal for the democratization process. The 2021 sale to the Verlagsgesellschaft Passau (now Mediengruppe Bayern) ended 76 years of family ownership.

The Mittelbayerische Zeitung is published by Mittelbayerische Zeitung GmbH of Regensburg and belongs to the Mediengruppe Bayern GmbH (formerly Verlagsgruppe Passau) — the Passau-based group of the Passauer Neue Presse — since the 2021 takeover. The publisher's managing director and the group's managing director is Simone Tucci-Diekmann; the editor-in-chief is Andrea Rieder. The paper employs some 400 people (as of 2022). The publishing house is part of one of Bavaria's major regional media groups, alongside the Passauer Neue Presse, the Donaukurier, and the group's other eastern-Bavarian titles.

Digital Presence

The website mittelbayerische.de is the paper's digital edition. On 16 March 2015 the online offering was completely redesigned and a paywall introduced — only four articles per month were freely available. On 1 October 2018 the offering was revised and the paywall replaced with a freemium model: unmarked articles are freely accessible, while paid articles are flagged with a symbol and blurred after a few lines. The daily is offered as an e-paper in its own app for mobile systems. The MZ also operates the football portal fupa.net in the Upper Palatinate. Beyond publishing, the company runs City Mail, a private postal service for more than 2,000 regional businesses and authorities (one of the first private mail services certified to ISO 9001), and the Pressezustellgesellschaft Oberpfalz delivery company, whose roughly 2,000 carriers distribute about 130,000 newspaper copies daily. The publisher also holds a broadcasting stake in regional radio stations in the Regensburg area.