About Grafschafter Nachrichten

Grafschafter Nachrichten

The Grafschafter Nachrichten is the regional daily newspaper of the county of Bentheim in Lower Saxony, published in Nordhorn by the family-run Grafschafter Nachrichten GmbH & Co. KG. Founded on 1 November 1949 by the two old publishing families Kip of Nordhorn/Neuenhaus and Hellendoorn of Bentheim, it is one of the few remaining independent family-owned dailies in Germany, appearing Monday to Saturday with a sold circulation of 19,295 copies including e-paper. As a Kopfblatt, the paper takes its national pages from its partner publisher, the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, while producing its local section, its local sports pages and its regional advertising section itself. With its own printing centre in Nordhorn's Mediapark, the GN is the media house of the county of Bentheim.

Overview

The Grafschafter Nachrichten appears Monday to Saturday as a subscription daily for the county of Bentheim, parts of the Emsland and the neighbouring Netherlands. Its sold circulation stands at 19,295 copies including e-paper (IVW I/2023), reaching some 96,000 readers in its distribution area; the paper informs around 80,000 readers, including some 23,700 subscribers, about the day's events. The paid digital offering GN-Online generates 1.6 million visits and 5.3 million page views per month on the web and in the app, and the paper counts more than 40,000 followers on Facebook and more than 20,600 on Instagram, penetrating the region's population like no other media provider.

The readership of the GN is the population of the county of Bentheim: the citizens of the district town of Nordhorn, the textile town's workers and their descendants, the farmers of the county's rural municipalities, the commuters who work in the Emsland or across the Dutch border, and the engaged citizens of the county's councils, clubs and churches. The county's identity is shaped by its Protestant heritage, its history as a textile centre, its border location with the Netherlands, and the Bentheim sandstone that built its castles and churches. The paper's local journalism is the medium in which this border county's public life is conducted.

History

The Grafschafter Nachrichten was founded in 1949 by the two old publishing families Kip and Hellendoorn, whose predecessor papers reached back into the 19th century. From the Kip publishing house came the right-wing Protestant Nordhorner Nachrichten and the Zeitung und Anzeigeblatt of Neuenhaus for the lower county, first published in 1874; in 1943 the Neuenhaus paper had to merge with the Nordhorner Nachrichten. The Hellendoorn publishing house had distributed the politically more neutral, likewise Protestant-oriented Bentheimer Zeitung since 1879, renaming it Grafschafter Kreisblatt during the Nazi era. All other county papers had been discontinued in the Nazi period for political or economic reasons in favour of these two publishing houses, among them the Catholic Nordhorner Anzeiger, the Schüttorfer Zeitung, the Nordhorner Tageblatt and the Grafschafter Wochen-Rundschau.

After the Second World War the two publishing houses jointly founded the Grafschafter Nachrichten, whose first edition appeared on 1 November 1949 with a starting circulation of 6,000 copies. In 1967 the GN took over the much-reduced circulation of the competing Grafschafter Tagespost. In the newspaper crisis and the wave of newspaper deaths of the early 1970s, the GN entered a cooperation with the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung on 1 April 1974, under which the NOZ delivers the finished national section and carries out the printing, while the GN has since produced only its local section, its local sports section and its regional advertising section itself. Since 1980 the GN has been based with its editorial office, administration, advertising department, distribution, printing plant and dispatch in the Mediapark at Coesfelder Hof in Nordhorn, where the daily is produced along with numerous external newspapers, magazines, brochures and books.

Coverage and Content

The Grafschafter Nachrichten covers the public life of the county of Bentheim with the thoroughness of a dedicated regional daily. The district council and the district administration in Nordhorn form a core beat, as do the town councils of Nordhorn, Bad Bentheim, Schüttorf, Neuenhaus and the county's other municipalities. The paper reports on the county's economy, from the textile heritage to the modern industrial estates, on the cross-border relations with the Dutch neighbours, on agriculture and the rural municipalities, and on the transport connections of the border region. The courts, the police and the emergency services are covered as a matter of course.

The paper follows the community life of the area: the volunteer fire services, the sports clubs and their leagues, the churches and their congregations in the Protestant-shaped county, the cultural associations and the traditional events, from the Bentheim castle festivals to the county's shooting and carnival traditions. The local sports section, produced by the GN's own sports desk, gives particular attention to the county's football and handball. The national and international news comes from the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung's national section. Family announcements, event listings and the classified and display advertising complete the daily, making the GN the marketplace and the noticeboard of the county.

Organization and Ownership

The Grafschafter Nachrichten is published by the Grafschafter Nachrichten GmbH & Co. KG, an independent family-run publishing house based in the district town of Nordhorn. The publishers are Gabriele Anderweit and Christian Hellendoorn, continuing the founding families' ownership into the present generation. The paper's printing takes place in the GN's own printing centre in Nordhorn's industrial and commercial park, a modern facility where more than 600,000 newspapers are produced every week, for which some 2,500 printing plates are exposed and fifty tonnes of paper are printed; the plant also prints external newspapers such as the Ostfriesische Nachrichten.

The GN's structure as an independent publishing house with its own printing plant distinguishes it from most German regional dailies, which have centralised their production in group printing centres. The paper's cooperation with the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, from which it takes its national pages, is a partnership between independent publishing houses rather than a group relationship. The company places great value on training quality, recognised with a seal from the chamber of industry and commerce, and its young business unit PXLWerk supports external customers with digital marketing measures from virtual 3D tours to web design. Financial details of the privately held company are not publicly disclosed.

Digital Presence

The Grafschafter Nachrichten's digital home is gn-online.de, the paper's paid digital offering, which generates 1.6 million visits and 5.3 million page views per month on the web and in the app. The portal carries continuously updated local news from the county of Bentheim alongside the regional, national and international coverage, with photo galleries, video and the paper's local sports reporting. The paper is published as an e-paper reproducing the printed edition page for page, and its digital subscription products serve readers who have replaced the printed daily with the tablet or the phone.

The GN's social media presence is among the strongest of any German local paper relative to its market: more than 40,000 followers on Facebook and more than 20,600 on Instagram extend the paper's journalism to readers who encounter the GN primarily on mobile devices. The PXLWerk unit's digital marketing expertise feeds back into the paper's own digital products. For the readers of the county of Bentheim, the digital GN is the online companion to the printed daily: the county's news on the phone in the morning, the e-paper on the tablet in the evening, and the gn-online.de portal as the continuous news service for the border county between editions.