About Nordbayerische Nachrichten

Nordbayerische Nachrichten

The Nordbayerische Nachrichten is the Upper Franconian edition group of the Nürnberger Nachrichten, published for the districts north of Nuremberg under a masthead of its own. It appears in three local editions — Forchheim and Ebermannstadt, Herzogenaurach and Höchstadt an der Aisch, and Pegnitz — each with local pages tailored to its territory, while the shared core sections come from the Nürnberger Nachrichten's central newsroom in Nuremberg. As the NN's northern outpost, the paper carries the Franconian regional daily into Upper Franconia, where it competes with the Bamberg-based Fränkischer Tag and other local titles. Its territory includes the cathedral city of Forchheim with its famous Annafest, the sporting-goods town of Herzogenaurach — home of Adidas and Puma — and the Franconian Switzerland around Ebermannstadt and Pegnitz, one of Bavaria's most distinctive cultural landscapes.

Overview

The Nordbayerische Nachrichten is a regional daily newspaper published Monday through Saturday in tabloid format, serving the Upper Franconian districts north and northeast of Nuremberg. It is not a standalone newspaper but an edition group of the Nürnberger Nachrichten (NN), published by the Verlag Nürnberger Presse Druckhaus Nürnberg GmbH & Co. KG. The name — "North Bavarian News" — distinguishes it within the NN family: where the other editions carry the names of their towns (Erlanger Nachrichten, Fürther Nachrichten, Hersbrucker Zeitung), the northern editions appear under this collective Upper Franconian masthead.

The edition group comprises three local editions, each with its own local section: one for Forchheim and Ebermannstadt, one for Herzogenaurach and Höchstadt an der Aisch, and one for Pegnitz. The territories are distinct. Forchheim is an old Franconian royal city of around 33,000 inhabitants, the center of a district that stretches from the Regnitz valley into the Franconian Switzerland. Herzogenaurach, in the Erlangen-Höchstadt district, is the world-famous sporting-goods town — the headquarters of both Adidas and Puma — and a prosperous suburb of the Nuremberg metropolitan region. Pegnitz and Ebermannstadt anchor the paper's coverage of the Franconian Switzerland (Fränkische Schweiz), the karst upland of castles, caves, breweries, and half-timbered villages northeast of Forchheim.

The NN group as a whole sells around 179,000 copies across all its editions, making it one of Germany's large regional newspapers. The Nordbayerische Nachrichten contributes its share from the northern districts, where it holds the NN's position against Upper Franconian competitors. The paper's digital home is shared with the rest of the NN family through the nordbayern.de portal and the NN's digital editions.

History

The history of the Nordbayerische Nachrichten is part of the Nürnberger Nachrichten's postwar expansion from a Nuremberg city paper into a regional newspaper for Franconia. The NN was founded on 11 October 1945 by Joseph E. Drexel, who received licence No. 3 for newspaper publication from the American Military Government in Bavaria. Initially printed in Zirndorf for lack of an intact press in ruined Nuremberg, the paper appeared twice a week in its first year, then three and four times a week, moving to Nuremberg in autumn 1949 and reaching six issues per week on 16 November 1962.

The NN's growth into Upper Franconia followed the paper's edition strategy: rather than serving distant districts with a Nuremberg-centered paper, the publishing house created local editions with their own mastheads and local sections. The Nordbayerische Nachrichten became the vehicle for the districts north of the Nuremberg metropolitan core — the Forchheim district, the western Erlangen-Höchstadt district around Herzogenaurach and Höchstadt, and the Bayreuth district's southwestern corner around Pegnitz. Each edition developed its own local identity while drawing the general section from Nuremberg.

The publishing house behind the paper, the Verlag Nürnberger Presse Druckhaus Nürnberg GmbH & Co. KG, is owned by Bärbel Schnell and Sabine Schnell-Pleyer, the heirs of Bruno Schnell, who built the NN into a regional power from 1959 onward — including the "Nürnberger Modell," the 1959 cooperation with six local Middle Franconian publishing houses in which the local papers produced their own home sections and took the general section from the NN. The editor-in-chief of the Nürnberger Nachrichten is Michael Husarek. The Nürnberger Zeitung belongs to the same group but is editorially independent.

In the digital age, the NN group's online presence was reorganized: the nordbayern.de portal, founded on 7 October 1996 by Matthias Oberth as the joint online offering of the Nürnberger Nachrichten and the Nürnberger Zeitung, was refocused after the launch of NN.de in 2020, and since December 2023 a dedicated editorial team has produced nordbayern.de independently of the print newsrooms. The Nordbayerische Nachrichten's local journalism flows into these digital channels alongside the rest of the NN family's output.

Coverage and Content

The Nordbayerische Nachrichten's content follows the NN family's standard architecture: the shared core — national and international news, Bavarian state politics, business, culture, and sport from the Nuremberg central newsroom, an authors' newspaper in which some 80 percent of articles are written by the house's own journalists, supported by a Berlin parliamentary bureau and foreign correspondents — combined with local sections produced for each of the three editions.

The Forchheim/Ebermannstadt edition covers the cathedral city and its district: the Forchheim city council and the district council, the courts, the schools, the economy — including the brewing tradition of the region, with Forchheim's famous Kellerwald beer cellars and the Annafest, the folk festival held each year around St. Anne's Day that draws visitors from across Franconia — and the tourism and village life of the Franconian Switzerland around Ebermannstadt, with its castles, caves, and hiking country.

The Herzogenaurach/Höchstadt edition covers one of the most economically distinctive territories in the NN's area: Herzogenaurach, the town that the Dassler brothers made the world capital of sporting goods, home to the global headquarters of Adidas and Puma, a major Schaeffler site, and the training base regularly used by the German national football team. The edition reports on the town's global companies and their local footprint, on the district politics of Erlangen-Höchstadt, and on the civic life of Höchstadt an der Aisch — while competing in Herzogenaurach with the Fränkischer Tag's regional edition, the Bamberg daily's local outpost.

The Pegnitz edition covers the northeastern edge of the NN's territory: the town of Pegnitz and the Franconian Switzerland's eastern approaches, where the paper's local pages document village life, club activities, and district affairs at the boundary between the Nuremberg and Bayreuth newspaper regions. Across all three editions, the paper performs the classic functions of the regional daily: municipal reporting, court and police news, school and church coverage, club announcements, and the family notices that make the local paper the community's bulletin board.

Organization and Ownership

The Nordbayerische Nachrichten is published by the Verlag Nürnberger Presse Druckhaus Nürnberg GmbH & Co. KG, the publishing company of the Nürnberger Nachrichten, headquartered in Nuremberg. The owners are Bärbel Schnell and Sabine Schnell-Pleyer; the editor-in-chief of the Nürnberger Nachrichten is Michael Husarek. The paper is printed in tabloid format.

The edition group is organized within the NN's system of local editions, each serving its defined territory with locally produced pages. The three Nordbayerische Nachrichten editions — Forchheim/Ebermannstadt, Herzogenaurach/Höchstadt an der Aisch, and Pegnitz — are the NN's Upper Franconian presence, extending the paper's reach beyond its Middle Franconian core into districts where the NN meets the competition of the Bamberg and Bayreuth newspaper houses. The group's scale — around 179,000 copies sold across all editions — gives the northern editions access to the full resources of a major regional daily: the Berlin bureau, the foreign correspondents, and the large Nuremberg newsroom.

The NN publishing house is also a regional media group with stakes in local broadcasting — including Radio F and Franken Fernsehen through the Funkhaus Nürnberg — and in digital and advertising businesses. That diversification has helped sustain the print editions through the industry's structural transformation. For the Nordbayerische Nachrichten, the practical consequence is the continued maintenance of three staffed local editions in the northern districts — a commitment to Upper Franconian local journalism within a Nuremberg-based publishing house.

Digital Presence

The Nordbayerische Nachrichten's digital presence is integrated into the Nürnberger Nachrichten group's online platforms. The nordbayern.de portal — founded in 1996 as the joint online offering of the NN and the Nürnberger Zeitung, refocused since the 2020 launch of NN.de, and produced since December 2023 by its own editorial team — carries the region's news to a large digital audience, reported at around 35 million annual users. The NN's digital editions and apps serve the group's subscribers, including readers of the northern editions.

The group's digital strategy follows the pattern of the larger German regional publishers: subscription-based websites, e-paper editions replicating the print papers, newsletters, and social media channels. For the Nordbayerische Nachrichten, the digital channels carry the editions' local journalism — the Forchheim council report, the Herzogenaurach company news, the Franconian Switzerland club announcements — to readers who no longer take the print paper, and they compete online with the digital portals of the Fränkischer Tag and other Upper Franconian titles.

In the northern districts, the digital local-news environment includes the same competitors as the print one: the Bamberg-based Fränkischer Tag's online portal, municipal and district administrations' communications, and the growing array of local social media groups and pages. The Nordbayerische Nachrichten's digital task is the same as its print one — to hold the NN's Upper Franconian territory with locally produced journalism — now delivered to screens as well as doorsteps, under a masthead that has marked the north of the NN's Franconia for decades.