About Südwest Presse

Südwest Presse

The Südwest Presse is a major German regional daily newspaper published in Ulm, Baden-Württemberg, and one of the largest regional newspapers in southern Germany. Founded in 1946 as the Schwäbische Donau-Zeitung in the American occupation zone, it was renamed Südwest Presse in 1968 and has grown into the center of a newspaper network (Zeitungsverbund) of more than 20 local publications that together cover over a third of Baden-Württemberg. The paper itself sells around 191,000 copies, while the network reaches some 1.1 million readers daily. It is published by the Neue Pressegesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, based in Ulm, whose shareholders are the Ebner Pressegesellschaft and the ZVD Mediengesellschaft. The editor-in-chief is Ulrich Becker. The paper's digital home is swp.de. As both a daily newspaper and the hub of a regional press cooperative, the Südwest Presse is a central institution of the Baden-Württemberg media landscape.

Overview

The Südwest Presse appears daily except Sundays from its headquarters in Ulm, the Danube city known for its cathedral with the world's tallest church tower. The paper's own circulation area covers Ulm, Neu-Ulm across the Bavarian border, and the Alb-Donau district, but its significance extends far beyond: as the lead paper of a Zeitungsverbund, it supplies the regional and national "Mantel" pages to more than 20 partner and subsidiary titles across Baden-Württemberg, from the Schwäbische Post in Aalen to the Zollern-Alb-Kurier in Balingen, the Geislinger Zeitung, the Heidenheimer Zeitung, and the Hohenloher Tagblatt.

The paper is published in Rhenish format and covers the full spectrum of a regional daily: Ulm city and Alb-Donau district politics, the regional economy — including Ulm's strengths in science, IT, and manufacturing — culture, sports (notably SSV Ulm 1846 football and ratiopharm ulm basketball), and comprehensive national and international news. Its reach of 0.581 million readers (MA 2020) for the core paper, and around 1.1 million across the network, makes it one of Germany's most-read regional dailies.

History

The Südwest Presse's roots reach back to the Ulmer Tagblatt, founded in 1859 and taken over by the Ebner publishing house in 1877. Under the Nazi regime, the paper was merged with the Ulmer Sturm in 1934, ending its independent existence. After the Second World War, the current newspaper was founded in 1946 as the Schwäbische Donau-Zeitung in the American occupation zone, with Kurt Fried, Johannes Weisser, and Paul Thielemann as publishers.

The Ebner publishing house became a major shareholder in the new paper during the 1950s. In 1962, the Schwäbische Donau-Zeitung merged with the Ulmer Nachrichten, and in 1968 it was renamed Südwest Presse — the name under which it has appeared ever since. The renaming marked the paper's ambition to serve as a regional newspaper for southwestern Germany rather than merely a Danube-valley local.

The following decades brought the construction of the Zeitungsverbund: local papers across eastern Baden-Württemberg adopted the Südwest Presse's supraregional pages while maintaining their own local sections, creating a cooperative network that preserved local editorial identities while achieving economies of scale. The Neue Pressegesellschaft, the paper's publishing company, expanded its holdings to include the Märkische Oderzeitung, the Lausitzer Rundschau, and — in 2025 — the Stuttgarter Zeitung, Stuttgarter Nachrichten, and Schwarzwälder Bote, acquired from the Südwestdeutsche Medien Holding. Since 2015, political and business coverage for the Südwest Presse and its eastern German sister papers has been supplied by the Neue Berliner Redaktionsgesellschaft, another subsidiary.

Coverage and Content

The Südwest Presse's local and regional coverage centers on Ulm, Neu-Ulm, and the Alb-Donau district: city politics in the two Danube cities, district affairs, the universities and science park (including the university hospital), and the regional economy with its mix of Mittelstand manufacturers, IT companies, and logistics. Culture coverage includes the Theater Ulm, the museums, and the city's festivals, while sports reporting follows SSV Ulm and ratiopharm ulm alongside regional amateur athletics.

The paper's national and international pages are produced by its own newsroom supplemented since 2015 by the Neue Berliner Redaktionsgesellschaft, giving the paper and its network a capital-city reporting presence. Business coverage addresses both the regional economy and national economic policy.

As the hub of the Zeitungsverbund, the Südwest Presse's "Mantel" pages appear in more than 20 local editions across Baden-Württemberg, each with its own local section: titles such as the Bietigheimer Zeitung, the Eberbacher Zeitung, the Ehinger Tagblatt, the Gmünder Tagespost, the Haller Tagblatt, the Neckar-Chronik, Der Teckbote, and the Metzinger-Uracher Volksblatt all draw on Ulm's supraregional production. This cooperative model is one of the German regional press's most extensive.

Organization and Ownership

The Südwest Presse is published by the Neue Pressegesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, headquartered in Ulm. The company's shareholders are the Ebner Pressegesellschaft mbH & Co. KG in Ulm and the ZVD Mediengesellschaft mbH in Göppingen, each holding 50 percent. The Neue Pressegesellschaft also holds 100 percent of the Märkische Oderzeitung, the Lausitzer Rundschau, the Stuttgarter Nachrichten, the Stuttgarter Zeitung, and the Schwarzwälder Bote, making it one of Germany's largest regional press groups.

The editor-in-chief is Ulrich Becker. The management board includes Andreas Simmet (chairman), Matthias Bikowski, Tilo Schelsky, and Herbert Dachs, according to published sources. The group's structure — with the Neue Berliner Redaktionsgesellschaft supplying capital-city coverage and shared printing and administrative functions — reflects the consolidation logic of the modern German regional press.

Readership and Market Position

With a sold circulation of 191,453 copies (IVW 1/2026, Monday–Saturday), the Südwest Presse has lost 45 percent of its circulation since 1998 — a decline in line with the German regional press average. Its network reach of around 1.1 million daily readers, however, keeps it among the country's most influential regional papers.

In its core Ulm/Neu-Ulm/Alb-Donau market, the paper competes with the Schwäbische Zeitung, the Augsburger Allgemeine, and the Stuttgarter Nachrichten in overlapping areas — a competitive situation that coexists with the papers' cooperation in the Zeitungsverbund and advertising combinations. The 2025 acquisition of the Stuttgart papers and the Schwarzwälder Bote from the SWMH significantly expanded the Neue Pressegesellschaft's footprint, creating a contiguous publishing territory across much of Baden-Württemberg.

The paper's advertising base spans regional retail, automotive, real estate, and employment advertising, supplemented by national inserts. Its role as the lead paper of the Verbund gives advertisers access to a uniquely broad regional audience through combined bookings.

The Verbund model that the Südwest Presse pioneered has been widely imitated but rarely matched at this scale. Its logic is straightforward: producing high-quality national and international pages is expensive, and small local papers cannot afford it alone; by sharing Ulm's Mantel while keeping their own local sections, the partner titles preserve the local journalism that justifies their existence while achieving the economies of scale that keep them viable. For readers, the result is a paper that is simultaneously deeply local and comprehensively informed — the Heidenheimer Zeitung reader gets Heidenheim news with Ulm-produced national pages, just as the Ulm reader gets Ulm news with the same national section.

Digital Presence

The Südwest Presse's digital home is swp.de, one of the leading regional news portals in Baden-Württemberg. The site operates a digital subscription model with e-paper replica editions, newsletters, apps, and an extensive online advertising inventory including the group's job, real estate, and automotive marketplaces.

The paper's digital strategy serves both the core Ulm readership and the partner titles' audiences, with the Verbund's local editions maintaining their own digital presences within the shared platform architecture. Social media channels distribute the paper's journalism and engage with readers across the region. The group's investment in digital — including the capital-city reporting resources of the Neue Berliner Redaktionsgesellschaft — reflects the industry-wide shift of readership and advertising from print to online.