About Dosse Kurier

Dosse Kurier

The Dosse Kurier is a regional daily newspaper published in Wittstock/Dosse, Brandenburg, as the local edition of the Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung (MAZ) for the Wittstock area in the district of Ostprignitz-Ruppin. Named after the Dosse river that flows through the town, it is the daily paper of record for Wittstock and the surrounding communities of the eastern Prignitz, a rural region in northwestern Brandenburg near the state border with Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The Dosse Kurier belongs to the Märkische Verlags- und Druck-Gesellschaft mbH in Potsdam, part of the MADSACK Mediengruppe headquartered in Hanover. It appears Monday through Saturday in print and publishes digitally through the maz-online.de portal and the MAZ news app, combining locally reported pages for the Wittstock area with the supra-regional content of the MAZ and the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND).

Overview

The Dosse Kurier serves Wittstock/Dosse and the surrounding municipalities of the Ostprignitz-Ruppin district, a sparsely populated rural region in northwestern Brandenburg characterized by small towns, villages, forests, and agricultural land. Wittstock itself is one of the district's historic towns, with a well-preserved medieval old town, and serves as a local center for the surrounding countryside. The paper's circulation area extends across the eastern part of the former Prignitz region, covering communities that look to Wittstock for administration, shopping, schools, and services.

As one of the MAZ's regional editions, the Dosse Kurier follows the group's standard model: a locally produced section with reporting from the Wittstock area, combined with the MAZ's regional pages for Brandenburg and the supra-regional mantle supplied by the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland, the MADSACK group's central newsroom in Hanover, which provides national and international news, business, sports, culture, and opinion to the group's papers. The paper appears six days a week as a subscription daily, with the subscription model typical of the East German regional press, where the daily paper retains a central place in household media routines.

The MAZ as a whole reported a total sold circulation of 54,424 copies across its editions, with the Potsdamer Tageszeitung in Potsdam as the largest single edition at 14,459 copies. Per-edition figures for the Dosse Kurier are not published separately.

History

The Dosse Kurier's history is rooted in the post-war press of Brandenburg. On 18 April 1946, the Märkische Volksstimme appeared for the first time in Potsdam as the organ of the SED for the former administrative regions of Potsdam and Frankfurt an der Oder, published in Berlin format at a price of 15 pfennigs. It succeeded the earlier party papers Volkswille of the KPD and Der Märker of the SPD, which had been merged in April 1946. From 1952 the paper served only the newly created Bezirk Potsdam of the GDR, functioning as the regional party organ of the SED throughout the East German era. An earlier SPD newspaper of the same name had existed from 1890 to 1933 before being banned under National Socialism.

With German reunification, the paper was acquired by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH in 1990, became politically independent, and on 3 October 1990 was renamed Märkische Allgemeine. The Allgemeine in the name was taken from the then-owner Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Under this new identity the paper built a network of local editions across western Brandenburg, each serving its district with local reporting while sharing the centrally produced pages.

Since 2011 the Märkische Allgemeine has belonged to the MADSACK Mediengruppe, one of Germany's large regional publishing groups headquartered in Hanover. The Dosse Kurier developed within this system as the MAZ's edition for the Wittstock area, carrying the Wittstock local pages alongside the group's regional and supra-regional content. In May 2022 the MAZ moved to OnePlatform, the MADSACK group's central publishing platform, integrating its print and digital production. The paper's editor-in-chief at the group level is Thoralf Cleven.

Coverage and Content

The Dosse Kurier's local section covers the public life of Wittstock and the surrounding Ostprignitz-Ruppin communities. Town politics in Wittstock forms a core beat: the town council, the mayor's office, planning and infrastructure decisions, the town budget, and the development of the historic old town and its tourism. The paper reports on the district administration in Neuruppin, covers local courts and police, and follows the rural economy, from agriculture and forestry to the small and medium-sized businesses that sustain the region's towns.

Education reporting spans the area's schools, while the paper covers the volunteer fire brigades, sports clubs, shooting societies, church parishes, and cultural associations that structure community life in the rural Prignitz. Local festivals, town anniversaries, and the seasonal calendar of markets and fairs appear regularly in the local pages. The paper also carries the family announcements and death notices customary in the German regional press.

The paper's reporting also tracks the region's infrastructure and development questions: rail connections through Wittstock station, the expansion of renewable energy in the rural district, broadband rollout, and the efforts of towns to retain young residents and attract skilled workers. The Swiss Krono wood-products investment in Wittstock and similar industrial projects have given the local economy stories of regional significance, and the paper covers the interplay between such investments, municipal planning, and the concerns of neighboring residents. Tourism around the historic old towns and the lakes and forests of the Prignitz adds a seasonal dimension to the coverage.

Beyond the local book, readers receive the MAZ's Brandenburg regional pages with state politics from Potsdam, and the RND mantle with national and international news, business and finance, sports, culture, features, and opinion. Weekend editions include magazines and special-interest supplements, and the advertising sections serve the region's businesses.

Organization and Ownership

The Dosse Kurier is published by the Märkische Verlags- und Druck-Gesellschaft mbH, headquartered at Friedrich-Engels-Straße 24 in Potsdam. The company describes itself as the leading regional news medium in Berlin and Brandenburg, employing between 500 and 1,000 people. It is part of the MADSACK Mediengruppe, headquartered in Hanover, one of Germany's major regional publishing groups.

Editorial production combines the MAZ's Potsdam headquarters and its network of local newsrooms, which produce the regional editions' local pages, with the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland in Hanover, which supplies the supra-regional content shared across the MADSACK group's newspapers. The group's editor-in-chief is Thoralf Cleven. The MAZ publishes in numerous local editions for towns across western Brandenburg, including the Brandenburger Kurier, Dahme Kurier, Der Havelländer, Fläming Echo, Kyritzer Tageblatt, Prignitz Kurier, Ruppiner Tageblatt, and the Potsdamer Tageszeitung, among others. Financial details for individual local editions are not disclosed separately.

Digital Presence

The Dosse Kurier's stories appear online at maz-online.de, the MAZ's digital news portal and one of the most visited regional news sites in Brandenburg. The portal publishes the Wittstock edition's local reporting alongside the group's wider Brandenburg and supra-regional coverage, with continuously updated news, photo galleries, and video. Selected articles are freely accessible, while full access is available through digital subscriptions, including the MAZ news app and the MAZ e-paper, which reproduces the printed paper page for page.

The MAZ operates a suite of newsletters, including a Brandenburg politics briefing, a daily five-topic regional roundup, and lifestyle and leisure newsletters, and produces podcasts distributed through its digital channels. The paper maintains an active presence on social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X, through which the Dosse Kurier's local stories reach readers who encounter the paper primarily online. The group's stated strategy places a clear focus on digital relevance journalism, with the local editions' reporting feeding the same digital products as the flagship Potsdam edition.