About Heute

Heute

Heute, whose name simply means Today, is Austria's largest free daily newspaper and, by readership, the second most-read daily in the country after the Kronen Zeitung. Published in German in Vienna from Monday to Friday, it is distributed free of charge through thousands of distribution boxes and at public transport points, and it is financed entirely by advertising. Since its launch in 2004 it has changed how Austrians encounter a newspaper: for hundreds of thousands of commuters, Heute is the paper picked up on the way to work rather than bought at a shop or delivered by subscription.

The scale of that model is recorded in the figures cited for the paper. Austrian circulation audit figures reproduced in the German-language newspaper listings give Heute a print run of about 459,805 copies and a reach of 9.2 percent. Earlier figures published when the Swiss group Tamedia took a stake in 2016 put the average print run at 644,713 copies, with about 938,000 readers a day according to Media-Analyse 2015, distributed through around 3,500 boxes in Vienna, Lower Austria, Upper Austria and Burgenland. The difference between those snapshots reflects both changing audit periods and the general decline of print, but the position is consistent: Heute is Austria's leading free paper and a fixture of its tabloid market.

Founding in 2004

Heute was founded in Vienna in 2004, with its first issue appearing on 6 September 2004. It was published by AHVV Verlags GmbH. The paper entered a market that had only recently experimented with free commuter papers: the U-Express, a free daily associated with Kronen Zeitung publisher Hans Dichand, had appeared in Vienna from April 2001 to March 2004 as a three-year project, and many of its staff moved to the new paper. Heute took that Viennese underground-newspaper idea and built it into a durable daily with a wider regional footprint.

The timing mattered. By 2004 Austria's paid tabloids, above all the Kronen Zeitung, still commanded very large circulations, but younger and urban readers were already drifting away from subscriptions. A free paper, available where people actually travelled, offered advertisers direct access to those readers and offered readers a compact digest of news, sport, weather, service information and entertainment without any purchase decision. Heute's launch, followed two years later by the daily Österreich in 2006, established the free and low-cost tabloid segment that researchers now treat as a structural feature of the Austrian market.

Eva Dichand, Wolfgang Jansky and the Publishing House

The public face of Heute is Eva Dichand, who has been its publisher since 2006 and was its managing director from 2005. Dichand studied economics in Vienna, worked in consulting and private equity, and entered the newspaper business through her husband Christoph Dichand, the Kronen Zeitung editor. She was named Media Manager of the Year in 2005 by the trade magazine Der Österreichische Journalist, and in 2010 the World Economic Forum selected her as a Young Global Leader. Alongside her media work she later took on prominent cultural and academic roles, including chairing the University Council of the Medical University of Vienna from 2018.

Wolfgang Jansky is the other central figure in the paper's history, associated with its founding and management and named alongside Dichand in the paper's ownership transactions. For two years Dichand also headed the monthly magazine Our City, and Heute briefly published a weekend magazine called Live in 2007, which was sold to Mediaprint shortly before it was discontinued in 2008. Those side ventures underline that Heute was built as a small, entrepreneurial publishing house rather than as part of one of Austria's established newspaper groups, even though its leading figures came from the wider Dichand media family. Importantly, Heute has always been run separately from the Kronen Zeitung and the Kurier, despite the family connection.

Ownership and the Tamedia Transaction

In 2016 the ownership of Heute changed significantly. Eva Dichand sold a majority interest in the digital side and a minority interest in the print publisher to the Swiss media group Tamedia, now part of the TX Group. Under the transaction announced in July 2016, Tamedia acquired 25.5 percent of Ultimate Media GmbH, the holding behind AHVV Verlags GmbH, which continued to publish the free newspaper. The majority of the print publishing company remained with the Periodika and Pluto foundations, which together held 74.5 percent. Eva Dichand and Wolfgang Jansky continued to manage the paper jointly.

At the same time Tamedia took 51 percent of DJ Digitale Medien GmbH, the company holding all of the digital offerings of heute.at, with Dichand and Jansky each holding 24.5 percent. Tamedia presented the deal as bringing Heute into a wide network of free newspapers, with advantages in shared content, know-how and technology, drawing on its experience with the Swiss free paper 20 Minuten. The transaction required approval from the Austrian Federal Competition Authority and was expected to close towards the end of the third quarter of 2016. The parties did not disclose its financial details, and a responsible profile should not invent a price for the deal.

Distribution: Boxes, Commuters and Four States

Distribution is the heart of Heute's model. The paper is not primarily sold; it is taken. Around 3,500 distribution boxes in Vienna, Lower Austria, Upper Austria and Burgenland put the paper at underground stations, tram and bus stops, railway stations and other high-traffic points. That geography explains both its strengths and its limits: Heute is a paper of Austria's east and of the Linz area in Upper Austria, with its deepest presence in Vienna and the commuter belts around the capital.

Publishing Monday to Friday aligns the paper with the working week and with commuting patterns. There is no equivalent free Saturday or Sunday edition on the same model, which distinguishes Heute from the subscription dailies that fight hardest for weekend readers. For advertisers, the appeal is a predictable weekday audience of working-age readers. For media researchers, Heute is a standard example of how free distribution can sustain very large print runs long after paid circulation has begun to fall, provided that advertising markets hold up and distribution points remain available.

Contents and Editorial Character

Heute is a tabloid in both format and editorial character. Its pages combine Austrian politics, Vienna and regional news, crime and human-interest stories, sport, weather, television and entertainment, puzzles and service items, presented in short texts with large photographs and direct headlines. Research on Austrian newspapers groups Heute with the Kronen Zeitung and Österreich as the country's tabloid competitors, with similar editorial lines and a populist label attached to the paper in listings of Austrian mass media. Expat and media guides aimed at international readers likewise describe it as a free, sensationalist tabloid.

Trust figures illustrate the contested reputation that comes with that style. Guides summarising Reuters Institute research have reported that a large share of respondents, around 48 percent in one cited summary, said they did not trust Heute's reporting, even as very large numbers continued to read it. That combination of high use and lower trust is common for free tabloids internationally and does not prevent the paper from setting agendas, especially on Vienna city politics, transport, crime and consumer stories that are then picked up by other media. A profile should record both facts without exaggerating either: Heute is widely read and widely debated.

Heute.at and Digital Reach

The paper's website, heute.at, is a major part of the business and was the asset at the centre of the 2016 Tamedia majority purchase of the digital company. Studies of Austrian news consumption have found heute.at among the websites that tabloid readers use regularly, alongside krone.at. The site follows the print paper's formula online: fast updates, short items, strong images, video and heavy emphasis on Vienna, sport, celebrity and service content. It gives the publisher a national digital reach that the print edition, limited to four eastern and central states, cannot match on its own.

Digital reach also matters commercially. A free print paper depends on advertising sold against audited distribution and readership. A large website allows the same newsroom to sell digital advertising and to keep the brand in front of readers on days and at hours when no print edition appears. The separation of the digital company from the print publisher in the Tamedia transaction showed how valuable that online arm had become within less than a decade of the paper's launch.

Competition in the Austrian Tabloid Market

Heute competes on two fronts. Against the Kronen Zeitung it competes for the same popular readership, but without a cover price and with a fraction of the Krone's historic resources. Against Österreich, launched in 2006 by the Fellner brothers, it competes directly in the free and low-cost segment for younger readers and for the same advertising. Media research for 2017 recorded daily reach of 12.9 percent for Heute and 7.2 percent for Österreich, against 30.1 percent for the Kronen Zeitung, which captures Heute's position precisely: clearly ahead of its free-paper rival, clearly behind the market leader, and well ahead of most quality and regional dailies in raw reach.

The paper has held that position through a difficult period for print advertising, including the economic crisis years in which it was described in international profiles as a business success and Austria's strongest-growing newspaper. Its survival, when many European free dailies closed or shrank to a few cities, rests on its concentrated geography: by serving dense commuter routes in and around Vienna rather than attempting national print distribution, Heute kept distribution costs aligned with the readers advertisers most wanted to reach.

People, Place and Daily Routine

Because it is picked up in stations and from street boxes, Heute is embedded in the physical routine of Vienna in a way that subscription papers are not. Its boxes are part of the streetscape of the capital and of towns across Lower Austria, Upper Austria and Burgenland. Its editorial focus reflects that setting: public transport, city hall decisions, housing, prices, weather that affects the commute, and football dominate in a mix aimed at readers who may give the paper twenty minutes on a train rather than an hour at a breakfast table.

That routine readership also explains the paper's service content and its accessible language. Heute is written in German for a broad audience, including readers for whom a broadsheet quality paper is not part of daily life. In Austria's highly stratified newspaper market, where education and region strongly predict which paper a person reads, a free tabloid that anyone can pick up occupies a distinctive democratic niche, whatever critics say about its journalism.

Assessment and Current Position

Heute's current position, on the audited figures cited in Austrian listings, is that of Austria's largest free daily and its second most-read daily newspaper, published Monday to Friday from Vienna by AHVV Verlags GmbH, with Eva Dichand as publisher. Its print run of about 459,805 copies and 9.2 percent reach in the cited 2025 listing are lower than the 644,713-copy average reported for 2015, a decline consistent with the wider print market rather than a collapse of the title.

No founding myth or inflated claim is needed to explain the paper's significance. In a little over two decades Heute proved that a free, advertising-funded daily could survive in Austria alongside the most powerful paid tabloid in Europe, build one of the country's most-used news websites, and attract a major Swiss media group as a shareholder. For anyone mapping Austrian newspapers today, Heute belongs in the first rank of titles to understand, not as a curiosity of the free-paper era but as one of the three tabloids that together reach the largest share of the Austrian public.