About Kornwestheimer Zeitung

Kornwestheimer Zeitung

The Kornwestheimer Zeitung is the local daily newspaper of Kornwestheim in the district of Ludwigsburg, appearing as a Kopfblatt of the Stuttgarter Nachrichten. With a circulation of around 3,200 copies, it is one of the three local editions of the Stuttgart daily, alongside the Fellbacher Zeitung and the Marbacher Zeitung, serving the town between Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg with local pages produced for its distribution area. The paper's local section is also enclosed in the Stuttgarter Zeitung in Kornwestheim, giving the town's readers the local journalism of both Stuttgart dailies. It is the paper of the Salamander town, documenting the daily life of a community shaped by the railway, the shoe industry's heritage and the Stuttgart region's growth.

Overview

The Kornwestheimer Zeitung appears Monday to Saturday as the Stuttgarter Nachrichten's local edition for Kornwestheim. The Stuttgarter Nachrichten publishes three local editions as Kopfblätter: the Fellbacher Zeitung for Fellbach and Kernen im Remstal with around 5,000 copies, the Kornwestheimer Zeitung with around 3,200 copies, and the Marbacher Zeitung with around 5,000 copies, reaching a combined core circulation of 52,220 copies. The paper contains a local section with municipal politics, town affairs and its own sports section, and the same local section is enclosed in the Stuttgarter Zeitung for the Kornwestheim area.

The readership of the Kornwestheimer Zeitung is the population of Kornwestheim, a town of more than 30,000 inhabitants between Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg: the railway workers of the classification yard, one of the largest in Baden-Württemberg, the employees of the town's industry and services, the commuters who work in Stuttgart or Ludwigsburg, and the engaged citizens of the town's councils, clubs and churches. The town's identity is shaped by the Salamander shoe company's heritage, by the railway, by the Pattonville district and by the drive-in cinema, the only one in Baden-Württemberg. The paper's local pages are the medium in which this town's public life is conducted.

History

The Kornwestheimer Zeitung belongs to the publishing family of the Stuttgarter Nachrichten, one of the two great dailies of the Stuttgart press house. The Stuttgarter Nachrichten was first published on 12 November 1946 under licence from the American military government, initially three times a week; its founding editors were Henry Bernhard, Otto Färber and Erwin Schoettle, and Chrysostomus Zodel served as editor-in-chief for a long period. The paper developed its local-edition system as the daily of the Stuttgart region, with the Kornwestheimer Zeitung designated for the town between Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg.

The paper's history is intertwined with the Zeitungsgruppe Stuttgart, the publishing group that holds 80 percent of the Stuttgarter Nachrichten Verlagsgesellschaft and 100 percent of the Stuttgarter Zeitung Verlagsgesellschaft. In 2025 the Südwestdeutsche Medien Holding sold its shares to the Neue Pressegesellschaft, reshaping the ownership of the Stuttgart press. The Stuttgarter Nachrichten's editor-in-chief is Christoph Reisinger, in office since April 2011. The Kornwestheimer Zeitung continues within this group as the local edition for the Salamander town, its historic title preserved within the Stuttgarter Nachrichten.

Coverage and Content

The Kornwestheimer Zeitung covers the public life of Kornwestheim with the thoroughness of a dedicated local edition. The town council and the town administration form a core beat, as does the Ludwigsburg district administration. The paper reports on the railway and the classification yard, the town's defining infrastructure, on the development of the former Salamander area and the town centre, on the housing growth between Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg, and on the schools, including the town's Gymnasium, Realschule, Gemeinschaftsschule and primary schools. The courts, the police and the emergency services are covered as a matter of course.

A distinctive theme of the paper's reporting is the town's industrial heritage and its transformation: the Salamander shoe company's history, the barracks' conversion to the Pattonville district, the drive-in cinema as a regional landmark, and the town's position in the Stuttgart region's growth corridor. The paper follows the community life of the area: the volunteer fire services, the sports clubs and their leagues, the churches and their congregations, and the cultural associations and traditional festivals of the town. The regional, national and international news comes from the Stuttgarter Nachrichten's newsroom. Family announcements, event listings and the classified and display advertising complete the edition.

The paper's reporting on the town's institutions gives particular attention to the Land authorities seated in Kornwestheim: the state's land-registry central archive on the former Salamander site, where all paper land-register documents from Baden-Württemberg's registries have been consolidated, and the geodata centre of the State Office for Geoinformation and Land Development. The railway classification yard, the second-largest in Baden-Württemberg with up to 1,600 freight cars assembled daily, is a recurring subject of the paper's infrastructure reporting. The Pattonville district, created from the former American barracks, and the drive-in cinema, the only one in Baden-Württemberg with its two projection walls and FM-transmitted sound, give the paper's local pages their distinctive subjects. Like the other Stuttgarter Nachrichten editions, the Kornwestheim paper reports on the volunteer fire services and the emergency responders, on the schools and the clubs, and its readers' letters and service pages give the town's citizens a direct voice.

Organization and Ownership

The Kornwestheimer Zeitung is published within the Stuttgarter Nachrichten publishing operation of the Stuttgarter Nachrichten Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, in which the Zeitungsgruppe Stuttgart holds 80 percent. The Zeitungsgruppe Stuttgart, in turn, is part of the ownership structure that was reshaped in 2025 when the Südwestdeutsche Medien Holding sold its shares to the Neue Pressegesellschaft, the Ulm publishing group behind the Südwest Presse. The editor-in-chief of the Stuttgarter Nachrichten is Christoph Reisinger, in office since April 2011.

The group's structure combines the shared national and regional sections produced in Stuttgart-Möhringen with the local editions' own newsrooms in Fellbach, Kornwestheim and Marbach. The Stuttgarter Nachrichten also produces the supra-regional pages for a whole family of partner papers in the Stuttgart region, from the Backnanger Kreiszeitung to the Waiblinger Kreiszeitung, and cooperates editorially with the Schwarzwälder Bote. Financial details for the individual local editions are not disclosed separately; the group's economics rest on subscriptions, regional advertising and the digital revenues of the stuttgarter-nachrichten.de portal.

Digital Presence

The Kornwestheimer Zeitung appears digitally on stuttgarter-nachrichten.de, the portal of the Stuttgarter Nachrichten, which carries the paper's local reporting for Kornwestheim alongside the regional, national and international coverage of the Stuttgart newsroom. The portal is continuously updated with local news from the town between Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg, photo galleries and multimedia content, extending the daily's reporting to readers on desktop and mobile devices. The paper is published as an e-paper reproducing the printed edition page for page, serving subscribers who read the daily on tablet or desktop.

As a subscription daily, much of the digital content is reserved for registered and paying readers, while selected local stories remain freely accessible. The group's digital products include newsletters and breaking-news alerts for the region, and the paper's local journalism circulates through social media channels to readers who encounter the paper primarily on mobile devices. For the readers of Kornwestheim, the digital Kornwestheimer Zeitung is the online companion to the printed local edition: the Salamander town's news on the phone in the morning, the e-paper on the tablet in the evening, and the stuttgarter-nachrichten.de portal as the continuous news service for the Stuttgart region between editions.