About Jülicher Zeitung

Jülicher Zeitung

The Jülicher Zeitung is the local edition of the Aachener Zeitung for the town of Jülich and the northern part of the district of Düren, in the historic area of the former district of Jülich in North Rhine-Westphalia. Appearing as a Kopfblatt of the Aachen daily, it serves the readers of the Lower Rhine's southern reaches with local pages produced for its distribution area, combined with the regional, national and international sections of the Aachener Zeitung. The Aachen daily was founded in 1946 as the Aachener Volkszeitung and renamed Aachener Zeitung on 6 March 1996, and it is published today by the Belgian Mediahuis group. The Jülich edition brings this journalism into the fortress town on the Rur and its surrounding communities.

Overview

The Jülicher Zeitung appears Monday to Saturday as the Aachener Zeitung's local edition for Jülich and the northern Düren district. The Aachener Zeitung appears in three editions, one each for the Aachen city region and the districts of Düren and Heinsberg, all using the parent title as the masthead, with the Jülicher Zeitung name designating the northern part of the Düren district. Together the three editions reach some 50,000 copies and, according to the publisher's figures, around 300,000 readers daily. The paper is printed in the Rhenish format and sold mainly by subscription, with a subscription share of 84.9 percent.

The readership of the Jülich edition is the population of the town of Jülich and its surrounding municipalities: the citizens of the former fortress town with its Renaissance citadel, the employees of the Jülich Research Centre, one of Europe's largest research institutions, the commuters who work in the Rhineland's industrial centres, and the engaged citizens of the district's councils, clubs and churches. The region's identity is shaped by the Rur river, by the former district of Jülich's agricultural and industrial mix, by the lignite region to the east, and by the proximity of the Dutch border. The paper's local pages are the medium in which this region's public life is conducted.

History

The Jülicher Zeitung belongs to the publishing family of the Aachener Zeitung, one of the great post-war foundations of the German regional press. The Aachener Zeitung was founded in 1946 as the Aachener Volkszeitung by Jakob Schmitz, Josef Hofmann, Albert Maas and Johannes Ernst, first printed on 22 February 1946. It was the first free paper published by Germans after the Second World War. The paper appeared initially only two or three times a week, but daily every working day from 1 September 1949, and it was renamed Aachener Zeitung on 6 March 1996.

The local-edition system developed as the paper grew into the daily of the Aachen region, with the Jülicher Zeitung designated for the northern part of the district of Düren, the territory of the former district of Jülich. The sister paper, the Aachener Nachrichten, maintained its own system of local editions, including the Jülicher Nachrichten for the northern half of the Düren district. In 2022 the Belgian Mediahuis group took over the Aachen publishing house, and the two dailies, the Aachener Zeitung and the Aachener Nachrichten, moved toward a merger under Mediahuis ownership. The Jülicher Zeitung continues within this group as the local edition for the Jülich area, published under the Aachener Zeitung masthead.

Coverage and Content

The Jülicher Zeitung covers the public life of Jülich and the northern Düren district with the thoroughness of a dedicated local edition. The town council of Jülich and the municipal councils of the surrounding communities form a core beat, as does the district administration in Düren. The paper reports on the Jülich Research Centre and its role in the region, on the structural change of the Rhineland lignite region and the region's economic development, on agriculture and the district's rural municipalities, and on the transport connections to Aachen, Düren and Cologne. 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 fortress town's history and its present: the Jülich citadel, the Napoleonic-era fortifications and the town's Renaissance heritage give the paper's local pages a recurring historical frame, while the research centre, the Solar Campus and the town's energy-transition projects look to the future. 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 Rur town. The regional, national and international news, the business pages and the supra-regional sports coverage come from the Aachener Zeitung's newsroom. Family announcements, event listings and the classified and display advertising complete the edition.

A recurring subject of the paper's reporting is the structural transformation of the Rhineland lignite region, in whose western foothills the Jülich area lies: the phase-out of coal, the recultivation of the opencast mines and the region's search for new economic identities are followed with the continuity of a local daily. The paper also covers the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, the cross-border region of Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium in which Jülich lies, from the commuter traffic to the cultural cooperation. The Jülich citadel, one of the best-preserved Renaissance fortresses in Germany, and its museums, concerts and festivals give the paper's cultural reporting a distinctive local anchor, while the district's carnival associations and shooting clubs fill the community pages. Like the other Aachener Zeitung editions, the Jülich paper reports on Alemannia Aachen and the region's football, and its readers' letters and service pages give the district's citizens a direct voice.

Organization and Ownership

The Jülicher Zeitung is published within the Aachener Zeitung publishing operation, which has belonged to the Belgian Mediahuis group since 2022. The Mediahuis Aachen media house's journalistic core product is the Aachener Zeitung, which appears with its three local editions in the tabloid format in the Aachen city region and the districts of Düren and Heinsberg. The editor-in-chief of the Aachener Zeitung is Bernd Mathieu, who has held the post since 1995, and who is also the editor-in-chief of the Aachener Nachrichten since 2003; the concept of two newspapers under one editorial management was then new for Germany.

The group's structure combines the shared national and regional sections produced in Aachen with the local editions' own newsrooms in the districts. The Aachener Zeitung has received the European Newspaper Award multiple times, most recently in 2012, and its journalists have been nominated for the Henri Nannen Prize for investigative reporting. 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 aachener-zeitung.de portal.

Digital Presence

The Jülicher Zeitung appears digitally on aachener-zeitung.de, the portal of the Aachener Zeitung, which carries the paper's local reporting for Jülich and the Düren district alongside the regional, national and international coverage of the Aachen newsroom. Under the AZ-Web.de brand the paper has operated a website with news and reports from the regions of Aachen, Düren, Heinsberg and the Euregio since 1999, covering politics, business, panorama, sport, culture, society, science, digital, automotive, travel, advice, health, family and relationships, with live tickers for Alemannia Aachen and opinion and background pieces. The paper also offers a digital daily evening news service, "AmAbend", with photo galleries and videos, provided from 7 pm.

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 Jülich and the northern Düren district, the digital Jülicher Zeitung is the online companion to the printed local edition: the fortress town's news on the phone in the morning, the e-paper on the tablet in the evening, and the aachener-zeitung.de portal as the continuous news service for the Aachen region between editions.