About Grafenauer Anzeiger

Grafenauer Anzeiger

The Grafenauer Anzeiger is the local daily newspaper of Grafenau in the Bavarian Forest, appearing as the local edition, or Kopfblatt, of the Passauer Neue Presse for the former district of Grafenau in the present-day district of Freyung-Grafenau. Founded in 1884 by Carl Morsak, it has been a local edition of the Passau daily since 1946, combining its own local pages with the regional, national and international sections of the PNP. The paper's editorial office is on the Grafenau town square, and its editorial head is Andreas Nigl. It is the paper of the Bavarian Forest's oldest town, documenting the daily life of a region shaped by the national park, the border with the Czech Republic and the forest economy.

Overview

The Grafenauer Anzeiger appears Monday to Saturday as the Passauer Neue Presse's local edition for the area of the former Bavarian district of Grafenau. The paper is currently identical, except for its title, with the PNP's local edition F that appears in the former district of Wolfstein; the two districts were merged in the Bavarian district reform of 1972 to form the district of Freyung-Grafenau, but the newspaper titles have been maintained to this day. The Passauer Neue Presse reaches a sold circulation of 124,319 copies with its local editions, a decline of 31.3 percent since 1998, making it, alongside the Mittelbayerische Zeitung and the Straubinger Tagblatt/Landshuter Zeitung, the third daily of eastern Bavaria.

The readership of the Grafenauer Anzeiger is the population of the Bavarian Forest around Grafenau: the citizens of Bavaria's oldest town in the forest, the employees of the tourism, forestry and manufacturing businesses, the national park's rangers and researchers, and the engaged citizens of the forest communities' councils, clubs and churches. The region's identity is shaped by the Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany's first national park, by the border with the Czech Republic's Šumava, and by the forest and glassmaking traditions. The paper's local pages are the medium in which this region's public life is conducted.

History

The Grafenauer Anzeiger was founded in 1884 by Carl Morsak as a local newspaper based in Grafenau, in the era of the flourishing local press of the German Empire. The paper documented the life of the Bavarian Forest town through the Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era and the Second World War. Since 1946 it has been a local edition of the Passauer Neue Presse, which was itself founded on 5 February 1946 by the publisher Hans Kapfinger and grew into the leading daily of south-eastern Bavaria.

The paper's modern history is defined by this Kopfblatt relationship: the Grafenauer Anzeiger produces its own local pages for the former Grafenau district while taking the national section, the sports pages, the entertainment pages and the Bavaria section from the Passau daily. The district reform of 1972, which merged the districts of Grafenau and Wolfstein, left the newspaper landscape untouched: the two local editions continue under their historic titles, a living reminder of the old district boundaries that still structure the region's identity in associations, banks and church deaneries. The paper is printed in the PNP's Druckzentrum Passau, which also belongs to the Passau publishing group. The Grafenauer Anzeiger continues as the forest town's daily paper, its editorial office on the Grafenau town square.

Coverage and Content

The Grafenauer Anzeiger appears together with the other PNP local editions with a common national section covering politics, sport, entertainment and the Bavaria pages. Its independent local section covers the district of Freyung-Grafenau in four different parts: the district-wide news, the news around Freyung, around Waldkirchen and around Grafenau, giving each sub-region its own editorial focus. Occasionally reports from the editorial offices of the neighbouring districts are taken over in a separate section.

The paper covers the town council of Grafenau and the municipal councils of the forest communities, the district administration in Freyung, and the cross-border relations with the Czech neighbours. The Bavarian Forest National Park, with its wilderness, its wildlife and its tourism, is a signature beat of the paper, as are forestry, the glassmaking tradition, the winter sports of the forest mountains and the summer hiking season. The paper follows the community life of the area: the volunteer fire services, the sports clubs and their leagues, the traditional associations with their customs, the churches and their congregations, and the cultural life of the forest town. Family announcements, event listings and the classified and display advertising complete the daily.

The paper's coverage of the Bavarian Forest National Park is one of its signature beats: the park's wilderness development, the bark-beetle debates, the wildlife and the visitor centres are followed with the continuity that only a local daily can provide. The cross-border relations with the Czech neighbours in the Šumava, from joint tourism projects to everyday commuter traffic, form another regular subject. Like the other PNP local editions, the Grafenauer Anzeiger reports on the volunteer fire services and emergency responders of its area, on the schools and the glassmaking tradition, and its readers' letters and service pages give the forest communities a direct voice in the paper.

Organization and Ownership

The Grafenauer Anzeiger is published within the Verlagsgruppe Passau, the Passau publishing group behind the Passauer Neue Presse, which also publishes newspapers in Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia through its subsidiaries. The paper's editorial head is Andreas Nigl, who leads the Grafenau editorial office on the town square. The PNP's twenty local editions, from the Passau city edition to the Alt-Neuöttinger Anzeiger, the Burghauser Anzeiger, the Bayerwald-Bote of Regen and Zwiesel, the Deggendorfer Zeitung and the Trostberger Tagblatt, form one of the most differentiated local-edition systems in the German regional press.

The group's structure, with the shared national section produced in Passau and the local editions' own newsrooms, follows the classic Kopfblatt model that has characterised the Bavarian regional press for decades. The PNP's editor-in-chief is Martin Wanninger, and the group's president is Simone Tucci-Diekmann. The paper's website grafenauer-anzeiger.de gives the forest town's edition its own digital identity within the pnp.de portal family. Financial details for the individual local editions are not disclosed separately; the group's economics rest on subscriptions, regional advertising and the digital revenues of the PNP's online operations.

Digital Presence

The Grafenauer Anzeiger is present online at grafenauer-anzeiger.de and within the pnp.de portal of the Passauer Neue Presse, where the paper's local journalism for the Bavarian Forest appears alongside the regional, national and international coverage of the Passau newsroom. The sites carry continuously updated local news from Grafenau and the Freyung-Grafenau district, photo galleries and multimedia content, extending the daily's forest reporting to readers on desktop and mobile devices. The PNP established its YouTube channel in December 2008, distributing news in video format, and the digital edition is published as PNP.de.

The paper is published as an e-paper reproducing the printed edition page for page, serving subscribers who read the daily on tablet or desktop. As a subscription daily, much of the digital content is reserved for registered and paying readers, while selected local stories remain freely accessible. For the readers of Grafenau and the Bavarian Forest, the digital Anzeiger is the online companion to the printed daily: the forest town's news on the phone in the morning, the e-paper on the tablet in the evening, and the pnp.de portal as the continuous news service for the Bavarian Forest between editions.