About Fellbacher Zeitung

Fellbacher Zeitung

The Fellbacher Zeitung is the Fellbach local edition of the Stuttgarter Nachrichten, the regional daily of the Baden-Württemberg state capital. It appears as a head edition of the Stuttgarter Nachrichten in Fellbach and in Kernen im Remstal, with a circulation of around 5,000 copies. The paper carries the Stuttgarter Nachrichten's supra-regional pages together with a six-page local section covering local politics, city news, and its own sports section. The Fellbacher Zeitung is published by the Stuttgarter Nachrichten Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, based in the Pressehaus Stuttgart. The paper's digital home is stuttgarter-nachrichten.de. The paper's position as the wine town's daily, with its dedicated local section appearing in both Stuttgart papers, gives it a unique role in the Rems valley's media landscape.

Overview

The Fellbacher Zeitung appears Monday through Saturday as a subscription daily, combining the Stuttgarter Nachrichten's regional and supra-regional coverage with a dedicated local section for Fellbach and Kernen im Remstal. Fellbach, the paper's home city, is a wine town of around 45,000 residents on Stuttgart's northeastern edge, in the Rems valley, known for its vineyards, the Alte Kelter wine press, and its position within the Stuttgart economic region. Kernen im Remstal, the edition's second commune, comprises the wine villages of Stetten and Rommelshausen, whose vineyards and half-timbered centers give the paper's local reporting a distinctly rural character alongside the urban coverage of Fellbach.

The paper's six-page local section is the core of its identity: local politics, city news, and a dedicated sports section covering the town's clubs. The same locally produced section also appears in the Stuttgarter Zeitung's Fellbach edition, giving the town's news a double presence in the Stuttgart press. The city of Fellbach publishes the weekly Fellbacher Stadtanzeiger in cooperation with the Wochenblatt as its official bulletin. Fellbach's location in the Rems valley, its vineyards on the Kappelberg, and its S-Bahn and Stadtbahn connections to Stuttgart shape the paper's coverage of transport, housing, and the commuter economy, while the town's wine festivals and the Alte Kelter give the paper a rich cultural beat.

History

The Stuttgarter Nachrichten, the Fellbacher Zeitung's parent paper, first appeared on November 12, 1946, under a license from the American military government, initially three times weekly. Its publishers were Henry Bernhard, Otto Färber, and Erwin Schoettle, and the paper established itself as one of the two major dailies of the Stuttgart region alongside the Stuttgarter Zeitung.

The Fellbacher Zeitung developed as the Stuttgarter Nachrichten's head edition for Fellbach and the Rems valley, serving the wine town with its own local section while sharing the parent paper's supra-regional content. The Stuttgarter Nachrichten's three local head editions, the Fellbacher Zeitung, the Kornwestheimer Zeitung, and the Marbacher Zeitung, together formed the paper's core circulation in the Stuttgart region's local markets. The Fellbach edition's six-page local section, with its dedicated sports coverage, has given the wine town's clubs and athletes a journalistic platform unmatched in the surrounding region.

The Stuttgarter Nachrichten's sold circulation, 134,668 copies in 2025, reflects the industry-wide decline from over 218,000 in 1999, but the paper's network of local editions and its role as the mantle supplier for numerous regional dailies, including the Backnanger Kreiszeitung, the Mühlacker Tagblatt, and the Waiblinger Kreiszeitung, gives it a central position in the Baden-Württemberg press landscape. The paper's editorial partnership with the Schwarzwälder Bote, to which it supplies supra-regional content, and its cooperation with the Frankenpost, the Neue Presse, the Freie Wort, and the Südthüringer Zeitung extend its journalistic reach beyond Baden-Württemberg.

Coverage and Content

The Fellbacher Zeitung's local pages cover the public life of Fellbach and Kernen im Remstal in depth. Fellbach city politics forms a core beat: the city council, the mayor's office, the development of the wine town's center, and the municipal budget. The paper reports on the Rems-Murr district administration, covers the courts and police, and follows the regional economy: the winegrowing industry, the retail sector, the skilled crafts, and the commuter economy oriented toward Stuttgart.

The paper covers the emergency services and volunteer fire brigades, education from primary schools through the Gymnasien, and the churches, clubs, and associations that structure community life: sports clubs with their own dedicated sports section, choral societies, music societies, and the calendar of town festivals, the wine festivals, markets, and the Christmas market. The paper's reporters attend the town councils' meetings, cover the local courts, and report from the vineyards and the sports grounds, maintaining the on-the-ground presence that distinguishes a staffed local daily. Cultural coverage follows concerts, exhibitions, and theater, and the paper documents the region's heritage, from the winegrowing tradition to the Rems valley's industrial history.

The supra-regional pages of the Stuttgarter Nachrichten supply national and international news, business and finance, sports, culture, and opinion. The paper carries the classified and display advertising, family announcements, and death notices customary in the German regional press. Reader service journalism addresses the practical questions of daily life in the Rems valley: transport connections to Stuttgart, childcare, healthcare, and housing in one of the Stuttgart region's most sought-after residential areas, alongside the profiles, interviews, and historical retrospectives that connect the paper's readers to their wine town's heritage.

Organization and Ownership

The Fellbacher Zeitung is published by the Stuttgarter Nachrichten Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, based in the Pressehaus Stuttgart in the Möhringen district. The Stuttgarter Nachrichten belongs to the Stuttgart newspaper group within the Medienholding Süd, the newspaper arm of the Südwestdeutsche Medienholding, which also publishes the Stuttgarter Zeitung.

Editorial production combines the Fellbach local newsroom, which produces the paper's six-page local section, with the Stuttgart central editorial office for the supra-regional content. The same local section appears in both the Stuttgarter Nachrichten's Fellbacher Zeitung edition and the Stuttgarter Zeitung's Fellbach edition. Financial details for the individual local editions are not disclosed separately. The Stuttgart newspaper group's dual-paper structure, with the Stuttgarter Nachrichten and the Stuttgarter Zeitung sharing the Pressehaus Stuttgart while maintaining distinct editorial identities, gives the Fellbacher Zeitung's local journalism a stable institutional home within one of Germany's major regional publishing houses.

Digital Presence

The Fellbacher Zeitung's digital home is stuttgarter-nachrichten.de, the Stuttgarter Nachrichten's portal and one of the most visited regional news websites in Baden-Württemberg. The portal carries the paper's local reporting for Fellbach and Kernen im Remstal alongside the paper's wider coverage, with continuously updated news, photo galleries, and video. The paper offers an e-paper edition reproducing the printed paper page for page, and the digital products include newsletters, breaking-news alerts, and apps for mobile devices. The Fellbach local section's reporting appears within the portal's regional structure, ensuring that the wine town's news reaches readers alongside the Stuttgart region's wider coverage.

As a subscription daily, much of the paper's digital content sits behind a paywall, with registered and subscribed readers accessing the full local reporting. The Fellbacher Zeitung's local journalism circulates through the group's social media channels, extending the paper's coverage of the wine town to readers who encounter the paper primarily online, while the printed daily continues to serve its core subscription base in Fellbach and Kernen im Remstal. The digital platform ensures that the paper's reporting reaches the commuters to Stuttgart, the winegrowing community, and the younger readers who form the future of the paper's audience in the Rems valley.