About Illertal Bote

Illertal Bote

The Illertal Bote is the local daily newspaper of the Iller valley around Dietenheim in the Alb-Donau district of Baden-Württemberg, appearing as an associated paper of the Südwest Presse of Ulm. Published by the Neue Pressegesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, the paper serves the readers of the Iller valley with local pages produced for its distribution area, combined with the regional, national and international sections of the Ulm daily. Its local editorial office is in Dietenheim, and its advertising and editorial contact point is at Gießenstraße 22. The Südwest Presse, with its partner titles and investments, reaches around 1.1 million readers per day across more than a third of Baden-Württemberg.

Overview

The Illertal Bote appears Monday to Saturday as the Südwest Presse's local paper for the Dietenheim area. The Südwest Presse appears in a large number of local editions and associated papers, from the Schwäbische Post of Aalen and the Zollern-Alb-Kurier to the Geislinger Zeitung, the Gmünder Tagespost, the Haller Tagblatt, the Schwäbisches Tagblatt of Tübingen and the Neu-Ulm edition, with the Illertal Bote designated for Dietenheim on the Iller. The Südwest Presse's sold circulation stands at 191,453 copies, a decline of 45 percent since 1998, with a reach of 0.581 million readers. No separate circulation is published for the Illertal Bote.

The readership of the Illertal Bote is the population of the Iller valley around Dietenheim: the citizens of the small town on the Iller, the commuters who work in Ulm or Illertissen, the farmers and craftspeople of the valley, and the engaged citizens of the municipalities' councils, clubs and churches. The region's identity is shaped by the Iller river, by the proximity of Ulm and the Bavarian border, by the Upper Swabian landscape, and by the paper's position between the Baden-Württemberg and Bavarian press markets. The paper's local pages are the medium in which this valley's public life is conducted.

History

The Illertal Bote belongs to the publishing family of the Südwest Presse, the regional daily of Ulm and eastern Baden-Württemberg. The Südwest Presse is the successor to the Ulmer Tagblatt, founded in 1859 and taken over by the Ebner publishing house in 1877; after the Second World War the current paper was founded as the Schwäbische Donau-Zeitung in the American occupation zone in 1946, with Kurt Fried, Johannes Weisser and Paul Thielemann as publishers. The Ebner publishing house became a major owner in the 1950s, and in 1962 the paper merged with the Ulmer Nachrichten; in 1968 the Schwäbische Donau-Zeitung was renamed Südwest Presse.

The local-edition system developed as the paper grew into the daily of eastern Baden-Württemberg, with the Illertal Bote designated for the Dietenheim area on the Iller. The paper is published by the Neue Pressegesellschaft mbH & Co. KG of Ulm, whose shareholders are the Ebner Pressegesellschaft of Ulm and the ZVD Mediengesellschaft of Göppingen in equal halves. The Neue Pressegesellschaft also holds 100 percent of the Märkische Oderzeitung, the Lausitzer Rundschau, the Stuttgarter Nachrichten, the Stuttgarter Zeitung and the Schwarzwälder Bote. Since 2015 the political and business reporting of the Südwest Presse and the Märkische Oderzeitung has been supplied by the Neue Berliner Redaktionsgesellschaft, also a subsidiary of the Neue Pressegesellschaft. The Illertal Bote continues within this group as the daily of the Iller valley.

Coverage and Content

The Illertal Bote covers the public life of the Dietenheim area with the thoroughness of a dedicated local paper. The town council of Dietenheim and the municipal councils of the surrounding Iller valley communities form a core beat, as does the Alb-Donau district administration in Ulm. The paper reports on the Iller river and the valley's flood protection, on agriculture and the rural municipalities, on the commuters to Ulm and the development of the valley's infrastructure, and on the schools and childcare of the area. The courts, the police and the emergency services are covered as a matter of course.

A distinctive theme of the paper's reporting is the valley's position on the Baden-Württemberg-Bavarian border: the cross-border commuters, the cooperation with the Bavarian neighbours and the Iller's course through two states. The paper follows the community life of the area: the volunteer fire services, the sports clubs and their leagues, the churches and their congregations, and the cultural associations and traditional festivals of the Iller valley. The regional, national and international news comes from the Südwest Presse's Ulm newsroom. Family announcements, event listings and the classified and display advertising complete the daily.

The paper's local sports pages follow the district's football leagues, and its coverage of the Iller valley's cycling paths and leisure landscape reflects the region's recreation identity. Like the other Südwest Presse associated papers, the Illertal Bote reports on the schools and kindergartens, on the local clubs' anniversaries, and its readers' letters and service pages give the valley's citizens a direct voice.

Organization and Ownership

The Illertal Bote is published within the Südwest Presse publishing operation of the Neue Pressegesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, based at Frauenstraße 77 in Ulm. The editor-in-chief of the Südwest Presse is Ulrich Becker, and the managing directors are Andreas Simmet as chairman, Matthias Bikowski, Tilo Schelsky and Herbert Dachs. The shareholders of the Neue Pressegesellschaft are the Ebner Pressegesellschaft mbH & Co. KG of Ulm and the ZVD Mediengesellschaft mbH of Göppingen, each holding 50 percent. The group's local editorial office for the Iller valley is in Dietenheim.

The group's structure combines the shared national and regional sections produced in Ulm with the local editions' and associated papers' own newsrooms across eastern Baden-Württemberg, from Aalen to Villingen-Schwenningen. The Neue Pressegesellschaft's ownership of the Märkische Oderzeitung, the Lausitzer Rundschau, the Stuttgart dailies and the Schwarzwälder Bote makes it one of the major regional media groups in Germany. Financial details for the individual local titles are not disclosed separately; the group's economics rest on subscriptions, regional advertising and the digital revenues of the swp.de portal.

Digital Presence

The Illertal Bote appears digitally on swp.de, the portal of the Südwest Presse, which carries the paper's local reporting for the Iller valley alongside the regional, national and international coverage of the Ulm newsroom. The portal is continuously updated with local news from Dietenheim and the valley, photo galleries and multimedia content, extending the daily's reporting to readers on desktop and mobile devices. 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. The group's digital products include newsletters and breaking-news alerts for the region, and the paper's local journalism circulates through social media channels to readers who encounter the paper primarily on mobile devices. For the readers of the Iller valley, the digital Illertal Bote is the online companion to the printed daily: the valley's news on the phone in the morning, the e-paper on the tablet in the evening, and the swp.de portal as the continuous news service for eastern Baden-Württemberg between editions.

The paper's local editorial office in Dietenheim, with its contact point on Gießenstraße, is the Iller valley readers' direct line to the Südwest Presse: story tips, announcements and advertising from the valley's municipalities reach the newsroom there, keeping the local pages anchored in the towns and villages the Illertal Bote serves.