About Kreiszeitung für Höxter und Warburg

Kreiszeitung für Höxter und Warburg

The Kreiszeitung für Höxter und Warburg is the local edition of the Neue Westfälische for the district of Höxter in eastern Westphalia, North Rhine-Westphalia. Appearing as a Kopfblatt of the Bielefeld daily, it serves the towns of Bad Driburg, Beverungen, Borgentreich, Brakel, Höxter, Marienmünster, Nieheim, Steinheim, Warburg and Willebadessen with local pages produced for its distribution area, combined with the regional, national and international sections of the Neue Westfälische. With a sold circulation of 11,941 copies including the Paderborner Kreiszeitung, it is the daily of the Weser Uplands' eastern edge, published under the Neue Westfälische's motto "...denn wir sind hier zuhause".

Overview

The Kreiszeitung für Höxter und Warburg appears Monday to Saturday as the Neue Westfälische's local edition for the district of Höxter. The Neue Westfälische appears with a whole family of local editions as Kopfblätter, from the Bielefelder Tageblatt and the Gütersloher Zeitung to the Mindener Tageblatt, the Lippische Landes-Zeitung and the Paderborner Kreiszeitung, reaching a total sold circulation of 217,773 copies across all editions, with around 90 percent subscriptions. The Höxter-Warburg edition's local editorial offices are led by Simone Flörke in Höxter and Dieter Scholz in Warburg, the latter working in the former building of the Landeszentralbank.

The readership of the Höxter-Warburg edition is the population of the district of Höxter: the citizens of the Weser town of Höxter with its Corvey abbey, the spa guests of Bad Driburg, the farmers and craftspeople of the Warburger Börde, the commuters who work in Paderborn or Kassel, and the engaged citizens of the district's councils, clubs and churches. The region's identity is shaped by the Weser river, by the Corvey world heritage, by the Catholic character of the former Prince-Bishopric of Paderborn, and by the Weser Uplands' hills and forests. The paper's local pages are the medium in which this region's public life is conducted.

History

The Kreiszeitung für Höxter und Warburg belongs to the publishing family of the Neue Westfälische, the regional subscription daily of eastern Westphalia-Lippe. The newspaper's first predecessor was the Öffentlichen Anzeigen des Distriktes Bielefeld, founded in 1811; another predecessor was the Volkswacht, published in Bielefeld from 1830 to 1933. The current newspaper was created on 3 July 1967 by the merger of the Westfälische Zeitung and the Freie Presse, and it has its central editorial office in Bielefeld.

The local-edition system developed as the paper grew into the daily of Ostwestfalen-Lippe, with the Kreiszeitung für Höxter und Warburg designated for the district of Höxter, the easternmost district of North Rhine-Westphalia. The paper competes in its area with the Westfalen-Blatt, the region's other daily. Since 2015 the Neue Westfälische has been owned 100 percent by the Deutsche Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, the German Social Democratic Party's media holding company, after an already SPD-dominated ownership structure. The Kreiszeitung für Höxter und Warburg continues within this group as the local edition for the Weser Uplands' eastern edge, also marketed as the Höxtersche Kreiszeitung.

Coverage and Content

The Kreiszeitung für Höxter und Warburg covers the public life of the district of Höxter with the thoroughness of a dedicated local edition. The district council and the district administration in Höxter form a core beat, as do the town councils of Höxter, Warburg, Bad Driburg, Brakel, Beverungen, Borgentreich, Marienmünster, Nieheim, Steinheim and Willebadessen. The paper reports on the Corvey abbey and its world heritage status, on the spa and health economy of Bad Driburg, on agriculture in the Warburger Börde, one of Westphalia's most fertile plains, and on the transport connections to Paderborn, Kassel and Bielefeld. 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 region's Catholic heritage and its Weser landscape: the Corvey abbey's imperial history, the pilgrimage traditions, the Weser cycle path and the river tourism, and the half-timbered old towns of Höxter and Warburg. 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, from the town festivals to the shooting clubs' events and the carnival. The regional, national and international news comes from the Neue Westfälische's Bielefeld newsroom. Family announcements, event listings and the classified and display advertising complete the edition.

The paper's Corvey beat is one of its most distinctive: the former imperial abbey, a UNESCO world heritage site, with its Carolingian westwork, is followed through the cultural year, from the exhibitions to the concerts. The paper covers the Weser Uplands' tourism, the Weser cycle path and the river cruises, the half-timbered old towns of Höxter and Warburg with their town walls, and the spa gardens of Bad Driburg. The district's village anniversaries and the jubilees of the volunteer fire services are documented with the thoroughness of a local daily. Like the other Neue Westfälische editions, the Höxter-Warburg paper reports on the schools and kindergartens, on the churches and their congregations in the Catholic-shaped district, and its readers' letters and service pages give the district's citizens a direct voice.

Organization and Ownership

The Kreiszeitung für Höxter und Warburg is published within the Neue Westfälische publishing operation of Bielefeld, owned since 2015 in full by the Deutsche Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, the SPD's media holding company. The local editorial offices of the Höxter-Warburg edition are led by Simone Flörke in Höxter and Dieter Scholz in Warburg. The group's structure combines the shared national and regional sections produced in Bielefeld with the local editions' own newsrooms across Ostwestfalen-Lippe, from Minden to Warburg, and large parts of the regional and national editorial material are shared with the Lippische Landes-Zeitung of Detmold and the Haller Kreisblatt.

The Neue Westfälische's motto, "...denn wir sind hier zuhause", expresses the paper's positioning as the home daily of eastern Westphalia. The paper's reader service offers trial subscriptions in print and digital, newsletters and a reader hotline. 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 nw.de portal.

Digital Presence

The Kreiszeitung für Höxter und Warburg appears digitally on nw.de, the portal of the Neue Westfälische, which carries the paper's local reporting for the district of Höxter alongside the regional, national and international coverage of the Bielefeld newsroom. The portal is continuously updated with local news from Höxter, Warburg, Bad Driburg, Brakel and the other towns, photo galleries and multimedia content, extending the daily's Weser Uplands 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 the district of Höxter, the digital Kreiszeitung für Höxter und Warburg is the online companion to the printed local edition: the Weser town's news on the phone in the morning, the e-paper on the tablet in the evening, and the nw.de portal as the continuous news service for Ostwestfalen-Lippe between editions.