About Niederösterreichische Nachrichten

Niederösterreichische Nachrichten

The Niederösterreichische Nachrichten, universally known by its abbreviation NÖN, is a German-language weekly newspaper published in St. Pölten, the capital of Lower Austria, Austria. It is the leading state newspaper of Lower Austria, the large federal state that surrounds Vienna, and its defining characteristic is the depth of its local coverage: for decades the paper has appeared not as a single uniform edition but in 28 regional editions, each tailored to a district or area of the state. The NÖN is published by the Niederösterreichisches Pressehaus in St. Pölten, a publishing house owned mainly by the Diocese of St. Pölten, and it employs more than 170 staff alongside over 200 freelance contributors. Although it is a weekly in print, the brand now operates around the clock online through its portal noen.at, and its official website is noen.at. In October 2026 the company announced a major realignment under which the printed newspaper moved its publication day to Thursday and the number of local print editions was consolidated from 28 to 22.

Roots in the St. Pöltner Bote and the Catholic Press Association

Although the NÖN itself dates from 1965, its roots reach back almost a century earlier into the Catholic press tradition of the Diocese of St. Pölten. In 1868 the Bishop of St. Pölten, Joseph Feßler, bought the St. Pöltner Bote and reshaped it into the St. Pöltner Zeitung, a paper regarded as the third-oldest newspaper in Austria. In 1874 the Catholic Press Association of the Diocese of St. Pölten, the Katholischer Preßverein, was founded in Krems, and from 1876 it published the Preßvereinsboten. The association moved its seat to St. Pölten in 1889, consolidating the diocese's publishing activities in the city that remains the newspaper's home today. This church-linked press network, built up across the Waldviertel, Mostviertel, Weinviertel and Industrieviertel quarters of Lower Austria, formed the institutional foundation on which the modern NÖN would later be built.

The darkest chapter of that inheritance came during the National Socialist period, when the newspapers of the Press Association were converted into the Bäuerliche Wochenzeitung der NSDAP, a farmers' weekly of the Nazi party. After the Second World War the tradition was revived: the first postwar issue appeared on 7 March 1946, and among the young journalists working on the paper at that time was Hugo Portisch, who would go on to become one of Austria's most prominent journalists and documentary makers. The postwar decades set the stage for consolidation, as the diocese's many small local papers were gradually brought together into a single, stronger title.

The 1965 Merger and the Building of a State Newspaper

The Niederösterreichische Nachrichten was created in 1965, when eleven newspapers of the Catholic Press Association from Krems, St. Pölten and the Waldviertel and Mostviertel were merged into one title. The combined paper began with a circulation of around 37,000 copies. Expansion beyond its original core regions followed step by step: in 1966 the Hollabrunner Zeitung was founded as a local edition, and the remaining districts of the Weinviertel and the Industrieviertel were added by 1975, giving the NÖN a presence across the whole of Lower Austria. Through various takeovers over the following decades the network of local editions continued to grow, and since 1995 the print paper has appeared in 28 regional editions. Since September 2004 it has been printed entirely in colour, and since 2019 the editions have been produced as a unified newspaper that combines the local section with statewide reporting in a single product.

Twenty-Eight Regional Editions

The system of district editions is the structural heart of the NÖN. The 28 editions were named for the areas they served: Amstetten, Baden, Bruck an der Leitha, Erlauftal, Gänserndorf, Gmünd, Haag and St. Valentin, Herzogenburg and Traismauer, Hollabrunn, Horn, Klosterneuburg, Korneuburg, Krems, Lilienfeld, Melk, Mistelbach, Mödling, Neulengbach, Neunkirchen, Pielachtal, Purkersdorf, St. Pölten, Schwechat, Tulln, Waidhofen an der Thaya, Wiener Neustadt, Ybbstal and Zwettl. Each district edition is built from the same components: local reporting on municipal politics, schools, city districts, chronicle and court news and the various parts of the district, together with culture, a service section covering personal announcements, emergency service information, parish news and events, the statewide Lower Austria reporting, sport and further service pages. The model is supported by a network of local editorial offices across the state, coordinated from St. Pölten, which allows the paper to report at municipal level while still functioning as a single statewide title.

Content, Supplements and Special Products

Beyond its news pages, the NÖN produces an unusually large volume of supplementary journalism. Its special products run to more than 300 regional and local special journals a year, covering themes such as building and housing, business and research, health and motoring, and dedicated journals for school pupils, apprentices, students and senior citizens. The balance of the paper reflects its founding mission as a paper of record for provincial life: state politics and municipal affairs sit alongside agriculture, church and parish news, local business, culture and an extensive sports section in which Lower Austrian local football receives the kind of detailed attention that national dailies rarely give it. That local sports coverage is reinforced online by the publisher's dedicated football portal, meinfussball.at, while the nightlife portal nitelife.at serves a younger audience.

Publisher, Ownership and Editorial Line

The media owner of the NÖN is the NÖ Pressehaus Druck- und VerlagsgmbH, based in the state capital St. Pölten, which also publishes the Burgenländische Volkszeitung, the BVZ, with seven regional editions for the neighbouring state of Burgenland. The Pressehaus ownership has long reflected the paper's origins: the Diocese of St. Pölten held 54 percent, the Catholic Press Association of the diocese 26 percent and Raiffeisen-Holding Niederösterreich-Wien 20 percent, giving church-linked owners a combined 80 percent stake. In 2024 Austria's Federal Competition Authority approved, subject to conditions designed to protect media plurality, an increase of the Raiffeisen holding's stake from 20 percent to up to 28.6 percent. In line with the statutes of the Press Association and the wishes of its founders and Roman Catholic majority owners, the stated task of the NÖN is to contribute, in a Christian spirit, to informing and educating the population and to promoting the common good, while its editorial team remains independent of other institutions. Both editors-in-chief have publicly rejected suggestions of owner influence on the paper's reporting, insisting that they feel no pressure from the proprietors.

Editors and Publishers Through the Decades

Editorial leadership at the NÖN has been marked by long tenures. Hans Ströbitzer served as editor-in-chief from 1964 to 1995, spanning the paper's founding era and its growth into a statewide title. Harald Knabl, described as the first editor-in-chief of the NÖN and a managing director of the Pressehaus, held senior responsibility until the end of 2015. Martin Gebhart led the editorial team in 2016 and 2017, and Karl Ettinger took over on 1 October 2017 but had to give up the post at the end of November 2017 because of illness. On 23 November 2017 a two-man team took charge: Walter Fahrnberger, born in 1974, who is responsible for statewide reporting and the paper's more than 300 special products, and Daniel Lohninger, also born in 1974, who directs the local editorial offices. Both men had previously been deputy editors-in-chief and had worked in the NÖN newsroom since the 1990s. On the publishing side, Prelate Josef Eichinger was publisher of the NÖN from the late 1970s until his death in 2014. Gudula Walterskirchen became the paper's first female publisher in 2017, followed in October 2021 by Sonja Planitzer and Herbert Binder, and from March 2023 by Planitzer together with Georg Schröder. Gert Bergmann, who became managing director of the Pressehaus on 1 April 2025, also took over the publisher role in May 2026.

Circulation and Readership

The NÖN grew from its starting circulation of around 37,000 copies in 1965 into one of Austria's largest weekly newspapers. It sold 184,000 copies in 2007 and 170,000 copies in 2010. Readership figures underline its position in its home state: according to Media-Analyse 2015/16, the paper was regularly read by 535,000 people, 480,000 of them in Lower Austria, giving it a reach of 34.2 percent in the state and putting it head to head with the national tabloid Kronen Zeitung, which stood at 33.8 percent. More recent figures show the same leading position at a lower overall level: Media-Analyse 2024/2025 recorded 435,000 weekly readers and a reach of 24.6 percent, ranking the NÖN first among Lower Austria's purchased newspapers and confirming it as the most-read paid newspaper in the state.

Digital Expansion Through NÖN.at

The NÖN is no longer only a weekly newspaper. Its online portals, led by NÖN.at alongside meinfussball.at and nitelife.at, supply the region with news every day, and the wider NÖN and BVZ online network has set notable audience records: in March 2020 it registered 3,346,564 unique clients and 12,218,855 visits, the highest values in its history at that time. Since March 2023 the NÖN has reported on a daily, up-to-the-minute basis on NÖN.at, a response to rapid change in the media industry. According to the Austrian web analysis body ÖWA, the NÖN and BVZ network still reached 1,551,892 monthly unique users and 1,907,721 monthly unique clients in Austria in March 2025. The publisher's portfolio has also extended into television through NÖN-N1-TV, and social media has become a major distribution channel, with new posts sometimes appearing on the central NÖN Facebook page every ten minutes and, by the company's own account in October 2026, some 147,000 followers across its social channels generating 34.2 million monthly views.

The 2026 Realignment: Thursday Publication and Fewer, Larger Editions

In October 2026 the NÖN announced a comprehensive realignment of its print and digital offering, the result of a future-focused process in which the expectations placed on regional quality journalism were examined together with readers and around 100 Lower Austrians. The printed weekly moved its publication day from Wednesday to Thursday, a change intended to strengthen its position as a deepening weekend read, and the number of local print editions was reduced from 28 to 22: the Haag and St. Valentin editions were folded into the Amstetten paper, Mödling, Schwechat and Bruck an der Leitha were placed under the Baden edition, and Neulengbach and Purkersdorf were combined as a joint Wienerwald edition, with the company stating that the restructuring involved no editorial job cuts. At the same time the website was relaunched with improved navigation, shorter loading times and better display across devices. The new division of labour gives the digital channels primary responsibility for up-to-date news, with several hundred items from Lower Austria published on NÖN.at every day, while the printed paper concentrates more strongly on background, analysis, reportage and context, with additional portraits, interviews and reporting on social, political and economic themes, more space for food, travel and leisure including a dedicated culinary page in every issue, and coverage oriented more closely to the regions where readers actually live and commute. Managing director Gert Bergmann summed up the logic by noting that people inform themselves differently than they did only a few years ago, so the company is strengthening digital services, including a recently launched WhatsApp channel and its social media presence, while sharpening the print paper's profile as a medium for orientation, context and background.

Place in Lower Austria's Media Landscape

Lower Austria has historically lacked a regional daily newspaper of its own, with most residents otherwise consuming media published in Vienna, and the NÖN has filled that gap as the state's own news institution, standing alongside the regional studio of the public broadcaster ORF as one of the state's largest media. Its combination of Catholic ownership, district-level reporting and statewide reach has made it a fixture of public life in Lower Austria for six decades: an advocate, at times, in debates such as the long campaign for St. Pölten to become a full state capital, and a chronicler of municipal politics, parish life, local sport and regional business at a granularity no national title attempts. As the 2026 realignment shows, the paper is now redefining that role for a digital era, but the founding idea of 1965, that Lower Austrians should have a newspaper of their own built from their own districts, remains the core of the NÖN.