About Schwetzinger Zeitung

Schwetzinger Zeitung

The Schwetzinger Zeitung is a regional daily newspaper serving Schwetzingen, the historic asparagus town in the Rhine-Neckar district of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Published by the Schwetzinger Zeitungsverlag as part of the HAAS Mediengruppe, it appears Monday to Saturday with local sections produced by its own editorial office in Schwetzingen and the overregional pages supplied by the Mannheimer Morgen. The paper has belonged to the HAAS media group since 2001 and covers Schwetzingen and the surrounding communities between Heidelberg and Mannheim, including the neighbouring Hockenheim area served by its sister paper, the Hockenheimer Tageszeitung. Its online home is the morgenweb.de portal.

Overview

The Schwetzinger Zeitung is one of five daily newspapers of the HAAS Mediengruppe, the leading media company of the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region, alongside the Mannheimer Morgen, the Südhessen Morgen, the Hockenheimer Tageszeitung and the Bergsträßer Anzeiger. The group's dailies share the overregional mantle produced by the Mannheimer Morgen's central editorial office, while each title maintains its own local newsroom and regional identity. The Schwetzinger Zeitung's circulation area centres on Schwetzingen, a town of around twenty-two thousand inhabitants famous for its electoral palace and gardens and for the Schwetzinger Spargel, the asparagus grown in the sandy soils of the Rhine plain, and extends to the surrounding municipalities of the northern Rhine-Neckar district.

Schwetzingen's position between the major cities of Heidelberg and Mannheim gives the paper a distinctive coverage area: a prosperous suburban and small-town region shaped by the economic dynamism of the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region, with its mix of residential communities, logistics, services and agriculture. The paper appears six days a week in print and is available as an e-paper and through the morgenweb.de portal. Its readership consists mainly of subscribers in Schwetzingen and the surrounding area who rely on it for local politics, community life and the regional news of the metropolitan region.

History

The Schwetzinger Zeitung's history reflects the consolidation of the press in the Rhine-Neckar region around the Mannheimer Morgen. The Mannheimer Morgen was founded in 1946 in the aftermath of the Second World War and grew into the leading daily of the region. Over the following decades the publishing group expanded through the acquisition of neighbouring local papers, and in 2001 the Schwetzinger Zeitung and the Hockenheimer Tageszeitung joined the HAAS Mediengruppe, securing their future within a larger publishing house while preserving their titles and local editorial offices.

The HAAS Mediengruppe itself developed from a local newspaper publisher with its own printing works into one of Germany's most important mid-sized media companies, with interests spanning daily newspapers, advertising papers, magazines, radio stations including Radio Regenbogen, and digital platforms. The group reports reaching hundreds of thousands of readers daily with its printed offerings and millions of users monthly online, employing around 650 people. In 2021 the group's central editorial office began receiving its mantle content for politics, business and general news from the Funke Mediengruppe's central newsroom, a cooperation that pooled resources for overregional journalism. At the start of 2026 the group reorganised its editorial leadership, appointing Miriam Scharlibbe, the Mannheimer Morgen's editor-in-chief, as overall editor-in-chief for Mannheim, Bensheim and Schwetzingen, with Dirk Jansch continuing as the local editorial lead for the Schwetzinger Zeitung.

Coverage and Content

The Schwetzinger Zeitung's local pages cover Schwetzingen and the surrounding communities of the northern Rhine-Neckar district. Municipal politics is a central beat, with reporting on the Schwetzingen town council, the district council of the Rhein-Neckar-Kreis, and planning issues in a growing region between Heidelberg and Mannheim. The paper follows the asparagus season that defines the local agricultural identity, reporting on the growers, the harvest workers and the culinary culture of the Spargelstadt, and it covers the palace and gardens of Schwetzingen, one of Germany's most important baroque garden monuments, and the cultural events they host.

The paper reports on the economic life of the region, from the logistics and service companies of the Rhine plain to the retail sector serving the suburban communities. Club and association life receives extensive coverage, as do local sports and school topics. The overregional sections from the Mannheimer Morgen provide news from the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region, Baden-Württemberg state politics, national news from Berlin, international reporting, business, culture and sports. Service elements such as event calendars, obituaries, family announcements and consumer advice complete the daily offering.

Organization and Ownership

The Schwetzinger Zeitung is published by the Schwetzinger Zeitungsverlag GmbH & Co. KG, a subsidiary of the HAAS Mediengruppe headquartered in Mannheim. The group's publishing operations are led by Florian Kranefuß as chairman of the management board, with Robert Schmidtlein as commercial managing director for the Bensheim and Schwetzingen subsidiaries. Editorial responsibility for the group's dailies was consolidated at the start of 2026 under editor-in-chief Miriam Scharlibbe, who oversees the Mannheim, Bensheim and Schwetzingen newsrooms, while Dirk Jansch leads the Schwetzingen local editorial office and its day-to-day operations.

The HAAS Mediengruppe is a diversified media company with around 650 employees and annual revenues of around 100 million euros. Beyond the five daily newspapers, the group publishes advertising papers, special-interest magazines, and operates radio stations and digital portals. Production, distribution and advertising sales are handled through the group's shared services, including the HAAS Media marketing company and the group's delivery operations. The Schwetzingen office serves as the local point of contact for readers, clubs, institutions and advertisers in the coverage area.

Readership and Market Position

The Schwetzinger Zeitung operates in the competitive media landscape of the Rhine-Neckar triangle, where several daily newspapers circulate across the borders of Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse. The HAAS group's titles compete with the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung of Heidelberg, the Rheinpfalz of Ludwigshafen and other regional papers, but the Schwetzinger Zeitung holds a strong position in its core area around Schwetzingen, where it is the established local daily. The group's dailies reach a combined audience in the hundreds of thousands daily, with the online portals adding millions of monthly users.

Like all German regional dailies, the group's papers have experienced circulation decline, addressed through e-paper subscriptions, the morgenweb.de portal and digital subscriptions. The Schwetzinger Zeitung's market position rests on its role as the paper of record for Schwetzingen and the northern Rhine-Neckar district: its local editorial office covers the town council, the asparagus region's civic life and the suburban communities between Heidelberg and Mannheim with a depth no other medium matches. The 2026 editorial reorganisation, bundling the three media brands under common leadership while preserving regional identity and local presence, is designed to strengthen this position for the digital future.

Digital Presence

The Schwetzinger Zeitung's digital home is the morgenweb.de portal, the joint online platform of the HAAS Mediengruppe's daily newspapers, which presents the online editions of the Mannheimer Morgen, the Südhessen Morgen, the Schwetzinger Zeitung, the Hockenheimer Tageszeitung and the Bergsträßer Anzeiger. Readers can access the complete printed edition as an e-paper and follow the day's news through the portal's continuously updated online newsroom. The group's apps provide mobile access, and readers can follow the titles through social media channels, push notifications and newsletters.

The digital offering follows a subscription model, with the e-paper available as part of print subscriptions or as a standalone digital subscription. The HAAS Mediengruppe has invested in the digitalisation of its brands as a strategic priority, developing its portals and apps alongside new digital products. The integration into the large morgenweb.de platform gives the Schwetzinger Zeitung a modern digital infrastructure and extends its reach beyond the print circulation area to readers across the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region.