About news aktuell

news aktuell

news aktuell is a Hamburg-based press distribution and media services company, operating Germany's leading press portal presseportal.de. Founded in 1989 and acquired by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) in 1994, the company — news aktuell GmbH, based at Mittelweg 144 in Hamburg — distributes press releases, images, video and audio for companies, organisations and public institutions. Its services include the ots (original text service) newswire, the zimpel media-contact database and the voices journalist network. The company employed 135 people in 2023, its managing directors are Petra Busch and Vithunan Lingeswaran, and its official website is newsaktuell.de.

Overview

news aktuell is not a news agency in the classical sense but a press-release distribution service: it carries companies' and organisations' original texts to newsrooms, rather than producing independent journalism. Its flagship product is presseportal.de, the press portal launched in 1996, which publishes press releases, images and multimedia content for journalists and the public. According to IVW, the portal recorded 11.5 million visits per month in 2024, making it one of Germany's most-visited media services.

The company's services form a comprehensive PR distribution ecosystem: ots distributes original texts — press releases in the wording of the sender — to newsrooms and onto the portal; zimpel provides a database of journalist contacts for targeted PR outreach; voices connects companies with journalists and content creators. Together, these services make news aktuell the market leader in German-language press distribution.

As a dpa subsidiary, news aktuell combines the credibility of Germany's national news agency with the specialisation of a PR services company — a combination that has made it the market leader in German-language press distribution for three full successful decades of market leadership in German-language press distribution. Its Hamburg base places it in one of Germany's great media cities, close to the publishers, broadcasters and agencies that form its customer base.

History

news aktuell was founded in 1989, in the final years of the old Federal Republic, as a press distribution service for the emerging PR industry. The founding recognised that companies and organisations needed professional channels to reach the media: the press release, distributed efficiently to the right newsrooms, was becoming an essential tool of corporate and institutional communication.

In 1994, the Deutsche Presse-Agentur acquired the company, bringing it into the dpa group. The acquisition gave news aktuell the backing of Germany's national news agency — its credibility, its newsroom relationships and its technical infrastructure — while preserving the company's specialisation in press distribution. Under dpa ownership, the company grew into the market leader in its field. The dpa connection proved strategically valuable: newsrooms that trusted dpa's journalism extended that trust to the dpa-owned distribution service, while PR customers valued the association with Germany's leading news agency.

A landmark came in 1996 with the launch of presseportal.de, the press portal that would become the company's flagship. The portal gave press releases a public home on the emerging World Wide Web, allowing journalists to search, browse and retrieve original texts online. Through the following decades, the portal grew into one of Germany's most-visited media services, its 11.5 million monthly visits (IVW 2024) testifying to its central role in the German PR ecosystem. The portal's growth mirrored the internet's transformation of media work: from faxed press releases to searchable online databases.

The company's services expanded with acquisitions and developments: the zimpel journalist database, the voices network and the multimedia capabilities that transformed the press release from text to rich media. In 2023, the company employed 135 people, reflecting its scale as a significant Hamburg media business.

Content and Programming

presseportal.de is the company's central product: a searchable portal carrying press releases, images, video and audio from companies, organisations, associations and public institutions. Journalists use the portal to find original texts, download multimedia material and follow the communications of the organisations they cover. The portal's 11.5 million monthly visits make it a key infrastructure of German media work — the first stop for reporters seeking the original source behind the story, and for PR professionals measuring the reach of their communications.

The ots (original text service) distributes press releases directly to newsrooms, ensuring that senders' messages reach editors in their original wording. The service's name — "original text" — emphasises its nature: unlike agency journalism, which reports independently, ots carries the sender's own words, clearly labelled as such.

zimpel provides the journalist database for targeted distribution: PR professionals can identify and reach the journalists covering their topics, building media lists and managing outreach. voices extends the company's services to the creator economy, connecting companies with journalists and content creators for collaborations and sponsored content.

Coverage and Audience

news aktuell serves PR professionals, companies, organisations, associations and public institutions throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland — the senders of press releases — and the journalists who receive them. Its portal reaches 11.5 million visits per month, serving journalists, bloggers, researchers and the interested public who follow organisational communications. The company's customer base spans the German economy: from DAX corporations to Mittelstand companies, from federal ministries to local associations.

The company's dual audience — senders and journalists — gives it a unique position in the German media ecosystem: it is the infrastructure through which institutional Germany speaks to the media, and through which journalists access the original texts behind the news. For the dpa group, news aktuell extends the agency's reach from journalism into the PR services market.

Ownership

news aktuell GmbH is a subsidiary of the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa), Germany's national news agency, which acquired the company in 1994. dpa itself is owned by German publishers and broadcasters, giving news aktuell the institutional backing of the German media industry.

The company's managing directors Petra Busch and Vithunan Lingeswaran lead its operations from the Hamburg headquarters at Mittelweg 144. In 2023, the company employed 135 people, making it a significant business within the dpa group. The Hamburg base — in the city's Harvestehude district, close to the Alster and the media quarter — places the company among the Hanseatic city's communications industry.

Digital Presence

The company's official website at newsaktuell.de presents its services — ots, zimpel, voices and the presseportal — with product information, customer cases and contact details. The site serves as the commercial face of Germany's leading press distribution service.

presseportal.de is the company's digital flagship: the press portal launched in 1996, now recording 11.5 million visits per month (IVW 2024), carrying press releases, images, video and audio from thousands of senders. The portal's search, subscription and multimedia capabilities make it the essential tool for journalists following organisational communications and for PR professionals seeking reach.

news aktuell is present on social media, sharing PR insights, product news and industry content. As a dpa subsidiary founded in 1989, the company combines more than three decades of press distribution expertise with the digital platforms — presseportal.de, ots, zimpel, voices — that define modern PR work in the German-speaking world.

The website field in this profile reflects the company's official online home. Founded in 1989, acquired by dpa in 1994, and still operating from Hamburg's Mittelweg, news aktuell has grown from a press distribution startup into the infrastructure of German PR — the portal, the wire and the databases through which institutional Germany speaks to its media, serving 135 employees' worth of expertise to thousands of customers across the entire German-speaking world.