About Eifeler Zeitung

Eifeler Zeitung

The Eifeler Zeitung is a regional daily newspaper published in Monschau, North Rhine-Westphalia, as the local edition of the Aachener Zeitung for the former Monschau district in the southern part of the Aachen city region. It serves the Eifel towns of Monschau, Roetgen, and Simmerath, communities set in the forested highlands near the Belgian border. The paper belongs to the Mediahuis Aachen publishing group and appears Monday through Saturday in print and digitally through the Aachener Zeitung's online platforms. In Monschau it competes directly with the Eifeler Nachrichten, the local edition of the sister paper Aachener Nachrichten, with the two titles differing primarily in their local sections. The Eifeler Zeitung combines a locally reported section for the Monschau area with the supra-regional pages of the Aachener Zeitung's central newsroom.

Overview

The Eifeler Zeitung serves the southern part of the Städteregion Aachen, the former Monschau district, a region of the northern Eifel characterized by forests, reservoirs, and historic towns near the Belgian border. Monschau itself, the paper's home town, is one of the Eifel's best-known destinations, a half-timbered old town on the Rur river with a well-preserved historic center that draws tourists from across the region. Roetgen and Simmerath, the other main towns in the circulation area, are gateways to the Eifel's hiking areas and the Rur and Urft reservoirs.

As a local edition of the Aachener Zeitung, the Eifeler Zeitung combines a locally produced section from its Monschau-area newsroom with the supra-regional pages of the Aachen central newsroom. The Aachener Zeitung appears with three local editions in the Aachen city region and the Düren and Heinsberg districts, reaching around 50,000 copies and some 300,000 readers daily according to the publisher. The paper is printed in the Rhenish newspaper format and sold primarily by subscription.

The Eifel edition's readership includes the region's long-established families, tourism and hospitality businesses, commuters working in Aachen, and the Belgian-border community with its cross-border ties. The paper's local pages are the primary daily news source for a region that receives limited attention from the larger media based in the Rhineland cities.

History

The Aachener Zeitung, the Eifeler Zeitung's parent paper, was founded in 1946 as the Aachener Volkszeitung by Jakob Schmitz, Josef Hofmann, Albert Maas, and Johannes Ernst, first printed on 22 February 1946. It was the first free paper published by Germans after the Second World War, and it was renamed Aachener Zeitung on 6 March 1996. The paper was printed initially only two or three times a week, then daily every working day from 1 September 1949, and it grew into the leading regional daily of the Aachen region with a circulation of about 112,000 copies.

The Eifeler Zeitung developed within this publishing group as the local edition for the Monschau area, one of a family of district editions that once included the Aachener Zeitung editions for Aachen and Alsdorf, the Dürener Zeitung, the Eifeler Zeitung, the Eschweiler/Stolberger Zeitung, the Geilenkirchener Zeitung, the Heinsberger Zeitung, and the Jülicher Zeitung. In the modern era the editions were consolidated into three, for the Aachen city region and the Düren and Heinsberg districts, with the historic local titles maintained as editions.

The Aachener Zeitung and the Aachener Nachrichten, long the two rival dailies of the region, were brought together in the Mediahuis Aachen publishing group, with the Belgian Mediahuis group as publisher. The two titles maintain their distinct identities and local editions, with the Eifeler Zeitung and Eifeler Nachrichten continuing as parallel editions for the Monschau area. The group's editor-in-chief is Bernd Mathieu, who has led the Aachener Zeitung since 1995 and the Aachener Nachrichten since 2003.

Coverage and Content

The Eifeler Zeitung's local section covers the public life of Monschau, Roetgen, Simmerath, and the surrounding Eifel communities in depth. Municipal politics forms a core beat: the town councils, the mayors, planning and infrastructure decisions, and the interplay with the Städteregion Aachen administration. The paper reports on the local economy, from tourism and hospitality to skilled crafts, agriculture, and the cross-border economic ties with Belgium.

Tourism gives the paper distinctive beats: the historic old town of Monschau, the Eifel's hiking trails, the reservoirs, the winter sports areas, and the seasonal calendar of festivals, markets, and Christmas markets, including Monschau's renowned Christmas market. The paper covers the emergency services, the volunteer fire brigades, and the challenges of providing public services in a sparsely populated rural area. Education reporting spans the area's schools, while the paper covers the churches, clubs, and associations that structure community life: sports clubs, music societies, carnival groups, and traditional customs.

The supra-regional pages from the Aachener Zeitung supply state politics from Düsseldorf, national and international news, business and finance, sports, culture, and opinion, with coverage of the Euregio Meuse-Rhine cross-border region and live tickers for Alemannia Aachen. The border location gives the paper's reporting a European dimension unusual for a German local daily: cross-border commuting, Belgian shopping and services, the German-speaking Community of Belgium's media landscape, and the cooperation between German and Belgian municipalities all feature in the local pages. The paper also covers the challenges facing the rural Eifel, from demographic change and the provision of medical care to broadband expansion and the preservation of village centers. The Aachener Zeitung and Aachener Nachrichten have received the European Newspaper Award multiple times, most recently in 2012. The paper carries the classified and display advertising, family announcements, and death notices customary in the German regional press.

Organization and Ownership

The Eifeler Zeitung is published by the Mediahuis Aachen publishing group, the publisher of the Aachener Zeitung and Aachener Nachrichten. The group's editor-in-chief is Bernd Mathieu, a lecturer in digital business in media and communications studies who also serves on the jury of the Theodor Wolff journalism prize. Mathieu initiated the group's digital evening news service AmAbend, provided from 7 pm with photo galleries and videos.

The group's print portfolio includes the Aachener Zeitung's three local editions, the free Sunday paper Zeitung am Sonntag, distributed in around half a million copies to households in the Aachen city region and the Heinsberg and Düren districts, and the Klenkes city magazine, published since the 1970s with coverage of society, culture, film, music, theater, art, and literature in the Euregio. Editorial production combines the Aachen central newsroom, which produces the supra-regional pages, with local editorial teams for the edition areas.

Digital Presence

The Eifeler Zeitung's reporting appears online through the Aachener Zeitung's digital platforms at aachener-zeitung.de and under the AZ-Web.de brand, which has published news and reports from the Aachen, Düren, and Heinsberg regions and the Euregio since 1999. The portal covers politics, business, panorama, sport, culture, society, science, digital affairs, motoring, travel, health, family, and relationships, with continuously updated news, photo galleries, video, and live tickers. Selected content is freely accessible, while full access is available through digital subscriptions.

The group's AmAbend digital evening news provides a daily digital edition from 7 pm, and an e-paper reproduces the printed paper page for page. The group's mobile apps deliver the day's news with push notifications for breaking stories, and newsletters bring selected stories to readers' inboxes. The paper's Monschau-area reporting circulates through the group's social media channels, giving the Eifel edition's local journalism a digital audience beyond the print circulation area.