About Wertinger Zeitung

Wertinger Zeitung

The Wertinger Zeitung is the local edition of the Augsburger Allgemeine for Wertingen and its surroundings in the Dillingen district of Bavarian Swabia. The Augsburger Allgemeine — one of southern Germany's leading regional dailies — publishes the Wertingen edition with 3,162 sold copies, carrying the paper's comprehensive general section alongside the Wertingen newsroom's local pages. The edition serves the town of Wertingen (around 14,000 inhabitants) in the Zusam valley, between Augsburg and the Danube.

Overview

The Wertinger Zeitung appears Monday through Saturday, combining the Augsburger Allgemeine's Mantelredaktion pages — Bavarian, national, and international news, business, culture, and sports — with the local section produced for Wertingen and the northern Dillingen district. The edition is among the smaller of the Augsburger Allgemeine's local titles, which range from the Augsburg city edition (66,719) to the Donauwörther Zeitung (11,981) and the Günzburger Zeitung (10,871).

Wertingen's readership consists of the town's households, the surrounding villages' residents, local businesses, and the commuters oriented toward Augsburg, Dillingen, and Donauwörth. The edition's 3,162 sold copies reflect the small-town market and the paper's penetration in the Zusam valley's communities.

History

The Wertinger Zeitung belongs to the Augsburger Allgemeine's local-edition network, whose history is the post-war consolidation of Bavarian Swabia's press. The parent paper's origins: after World War II, the Augsburger Anzeiger appeared in the American occupation zone from 13 July to 23 October 1945, published by the 12th US Army Corps. German publishers Curt Frenzel and Johann Wilhelm Naumann took it over, publishing it from 30 October 1945 as the Schwäbische Landeszeitung — renamed Augsburger Allgemeine on 1 November 1959.

The local-edition network grew across the following decades, assembling the formerly independent titles of Swabia and parts of Upper Bavaria: the Aichacher Nachrichten, Donau-Zeitung (Dillingen), Donauwörther Zeitung, Friedberger Allgemeine, Günzburger Zeitung, Illertisser Zeitung, Landsberger Tagblatt, Mindelheimer Zeitung, Mittelschwäbische Nachrichten, Neuburger Rundschau, Neu-Ulmer Zeitung, Rieser Nachrichten, Schwabmünchner Allgemeine, and the Wertinger Zeitung. Each edition takes large parts of its editorial material from the parent paper while producing its own local section.

The Wertingen edition's history reflects the town's position in the Dillingen district's north — between the Donau-Zeitung's Dillingen core and the Donauwörther Zeitung's Ries territory. The edition preserved Wertingen's newspaper identity within the Augsburg group's structure, giving the Zusam valley's town its own title and local newsroom.

Coverage and Content

The Wertinger Zeitung's local pages cover Wertingen's town politics, the Dillingen district's northern communities, and the Zusam valley's villages. The paper follows the town council's deliberations, the district administration's decisions, and the region's development — including the 2024 southern Germany floods, when more than 250 Wertingen households were affected by the Zusam's flooding, a major local story.

Wertingen's heritage generates distinctive coverage: the Celtic iron-smelting finds, the Roman presence (the town lay south of the Via Danubia), the Alemannic settlement, and the old town's seventeenth- and eighteenth-century gabled houses. The paper covers the local Mittelstand, the schools, and the clubs and associations. The Augsburger Allgemeine's general section supplies the comprehensive offering: Swabian regional news, Bavarian state politics, national and international coverage.

Organization and Ownership

The Wertinger Zeitung is published by the Augsburger Allgemeine's Presse-Druck- und Verlags-GmbH, part of the Mediengruppe Pressedruck. The Augsburg central newsroom's Mantelredaktion supplies the general pages to all the local editions; the Wertingen local newsroom produces the town's section. The edition's 3,162 sold copies are reported within the group's edition-level circulation data.

The group's digital platform — augsburger-allgemeine.de, among Bavaria's most-visited news portals — carries the Wertingen edition's content online. The group's app offers all the local editions, including the Wertinger Zeitung, with e-paper, read-aloud function, puzzles, podcasts, and the digital weekly "extra." The "Sechs um 6" newsletter is the newsroom's most-subscribed.

The Zusam Valley

Wertingen's identity — the Zusam river's valley floor, the cold-air mists, the kettle location between the Geißberg and Judenberg — gives the paper's local journalism its landscape. The valley's agriculture, the flood management (sharpened by the 2024 inundation), and the town's position between Augsburg and the Danube form the practical agenda. The paper covers the river's ecology, the flood-protection debates, and the communities' relationship with the waterway that defines their valley.

The town's fourteen districts — from Bliensbach to Roggden — each contribute their stories, and the paper follows the village affairs with the attention of a publication that exists for precisely these communities. In a valley where the Zusam's moods shape daily life, the Wertinger Zeitung is the chronicle of the river's people.

The 2024 Flood

The June 2024 southern Germany floods were the Wertinger Zeitung's defining recent story: more than 250 Wertingen households affected by the Zusam's inundation, streets underwater, the valley's flood defenses overwhelmed. The paper's flood journalism — the warnings, the damage reports, the relief efforts, the reconstruction debates — was the community's information lifeline during the crisis and its forum afterward.

The flood's aftermath — the flood-protection investments, the insurance debates, the valley's vulnerability reassessed — remains the local agenda. The paper follows the dike projects, the retention basins, and the communities' adaptation with the persistence of a newsroom that reported the water's rise. In the Zusam valley, the 2024 flood is the shared reference point, and the Wertinger Zeitung is its chronicler. The paper's flood journalism extended beyond the immediate crisis: the volunteers' stories, the donations' distribution, the businesses' recovery, and the valley's long rebuilding. For the Zusam's communities, the Wertinger Zeitung's flood archive is the disaster's definitive record — the day-by-day account no other medium kept with such local precision. The Zusam valley's flood memory — the high-water marks, the anniversary commemorations, the preparedness drills — will shape the paper's agenda for years. The Wertinger Zeitung's role as the valley's memory-keeper extends beyond news into the community's resilience. For the Zusam valley's readers, that continuity — the same paper through flood and recovery — is the local press's deepest value.

The Swabian Press Landscape

The Wertinger Zeitung's position within the Augsburger Allgemeine's edition network illustrates Bavarian Swabia's press consolidation: the formerly independent titles — the Donau-Zeitung's Dillingen roots, the Rieser Nachrichten's Nördlingen heritage, the Wertingen edition's Zusam valley focus — preserved as local identities within the Augsburg group's production system. The model sustained small-town journalism through shared scale.

The Mediengruppe Pressedruck's advertising papers — the StaZ family's 2022 consolidation and restructuring — show the parallel free-paper market's pressures. The Wertingen edition's paid daily model, backed by the group's resources, represents the traditional local press's endurance strategy: local identity plus metropolitan scale.

Readership and Market Position

The Wertinger Zeitung serves Wertingen's households and the northern Dillingen district as the town's paper of record — its market position within the Augsburger Allgemeine's edition network combining small-town intimacy with the resources of one of southern Germany's leading regional dailies. The edition's readers value the local section's completeness within the parent paper's comprehensive offering.

Like all German regional dailies, the paper faces long-term circulation pressure, addressed through the augsburger-allgemeine.de digital platform, the app's e-paper, and digital subscriptions. The Mediengruppe Pressedruck's scale provides the economic base the Wertingen edition's local journalism depends on.

Digital Presence

The paper's digital home is augsburger-allgemeine.de, the Augsburger Allgemeine's online portal, which carries the Wertingen edition's local news alongside the group's regional and national coverage. The group's app — with all local editions including Wertingen, e-paper, podcasts, and newsletters — extends the edition's reach to digital readers. The portal's paywall (introduced 2014) and the "Sechs um 6" newsletter anchor the digital subscription strategy.