About Salzburg24

Salzburg24

Salzburg24 is a pure online news medium for the Austrian state of Salzburg, operated by SALZBURG24 GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Salzburger Nachrichten media group. Launched in November 2007, it was Salzburg's first online news portal and it still works with its own newsroom in Salzburg, independently of the printed newspaper while belonging to the same publishing family. It covers the state of Salzburg first, and also Upper Austria and neighbouring Bavaria in Germany, and it ranks among Austria's twenty most-used news portals.

Founding in November 2007 and the Russmedia idea

The idea for Salzburg's first online news portal originated inside the Vorarlberg media company Russmedia, then still called Vorarlberger Medienhaus until 2012 — the same house that had created VOL.AT, Austria's first regional portal, in 1995. Salzburg24 went online in November 2007 at the address salzburg24.at. Reference sources differ slightly on the exact day: the Salzburg24 encyclopedia entry dates the first launch to 23 November 2007, while Salzburg reference material gives 27 November 2007 as the date from which the portal has been online. This profile records both dates as documented rather than choosing between them; what is certain is the late-November 2007 launch under Russmedia.

At its founding, Salzburg24 was initially based on Innsbrucker Bundesstrasse in Salzburg, and later moved for some years to Alpenstrasse in the Herrnau district. The portal began as a Russmedia digital venture planted in another publisher's home market — an unusual arrangement in Austria's regionally divided media landscape, and one that explains the ownership change that followed five years later.

Sale to Salzburger Nachrichten in 2012

In August 2012 Salzburg24 was sold to the Salzburger Nachrichten, the leading daily newspaper of the state of Salzburg. The seven employees in editorial and sales at the time were taken over in the sale. The acquisition brought the portal into the publishing house of the Dasch family, whose Salzburger Nachrichten Medien group owns the portal to this day through SALZBURG24 GmbH.

The Salzburger Nachrichten group's own participation disclosures list SALZBURG24 GmbH of Salzburg as a 100 percent holding, with a business purpose covering the editorial operation and marketing of digital information platforms and the development of digital business fields such as shop, affiliate, streaming and databases. Salzburg24 thus became the fast, free digital complement to the subscription newspaper Salzburger Nachrichten and its website sn.at — a pairing the group later marketed together as the strongest publisher-origin digital offer in the state of Salzburg.

Operator and ownership today

SALZBURG24 GmbH is a wholly owned subsidiary within Salzburger Nachrichten Medien, which is owned by the Dasch family through their holding structure. Despite that integration into the group, Salzburg24 acts independently and with its own newsroom in Salzburg. German reference listings for the portal name Nicole Schuchter as editor-in-chief, with Moritz Naderer and Thomas Pfeifer as deputies, and list Salzburg24 GmbH together with Salzburger Nachrichten as publisher.

The distinction between ownership and editorial operation matters for understanding the portal: it shares a publisher, a city and a market with one of Austria's respected regional quality newspapers, but it was not created as that newspaper's website. It is a digital-native brand with its own editorial identity that was acquired into the group, the reverse of the usual newspaper-portal relationship.

Coverage area: Salzburg, Upper Austria and Bavaria

Salzburg24 reports first on the state of Salzburg — the city of Salzburg and the districts of Flachgau, Tennengau, Pongau, Pinzgau and Lungau — and extends its coverage to Upper Austria and neighbouring Bavaria. That cross-border reach reflects Salzburg's geography: the city sits close to the German border, its commuter and tourism economy is intertwined with south-eastern Bavaria, and the Salzburger Nachrichten group itself publishes material for the Bavarian border area.

Within that territory the portal provides current news from Salzburg, Austria and the world, across politics, sport, society, traffic and lifestyle, in the fast format its name promises. Its self-description as a news portal stresses speed and regionality: to be informed always and currently, with top news from politics, sport, life, transport and lifestyle from Austria and the world.

Editorial character as a pure online medium

Salzburg24 is classified in Austrian reach tables as a pure online medium, meaning it has no print edition of its own. Its journalism is produced for continuous online publication rather than for a daily print cycle, which shapes its rhythm: frequent short updates, live developments, photo-rich regional stories and service information published throughout the day.

Belonging to the Salzburger Nachrichten group gives the portal a particular standing among pure online media. Most digital-native portals in Austria grew up outside the traditional publishing houses; Salzburg24, after its first five years under Russmedia, has spent the period since 2012 inside one of the country's established family-owned quality newspaper groups, with the group's standards, agency access and commercial infrastructure behind its own newsroom.

Audience and ÖWA ranking

In the Österreichische Webanalyse annual ranking for 2025, Salzburg24 placed 17th in Austria with 922,032 unique users per month and 5,310,594 visits per month. It was one of only two outlets in the national top twenty classified as pure online media, the other being 5min.at, and it ranked ahead of the online services of several printed magazine and newspaper brands.

For a single-state portal, those figures represent deep penetration of its home market. Salzburg is a mid-sized Austrian state, and a monthly audience of more than 900,000 unique users indicates that the portal is used well beyond a narrow local readership, helped by its Upper Austrian and Bavarian coverage and by national stories carried in its news stream. Together with sn.at, the group describes its digital portfolio as the highest-reach publisher offer in the state of Salzburg.

Quality journalism funding in 2024

In 2024 Salzburg24 was one of only two online media that met the criteria of Austria's quality-journalism funding scheme, the other being 5min.at. Meeting those criteria required, among other conditions, a qualifying measured reach and compliance with the scheme's journalistic requirements.

The recognition is significant for the same reason as Salzburg24's reach ranking: a portal founded as a commercial digital venture, without a print tradition of its own, satisfied the conditions of a funding framework built around journalistic quality. Within the Salzburger Nachrichten group it also formally confirmed the portal's status as a journalistic product in its own right rather than a marketing channel for the newspaper.

Relationship with Salzburger Nachrichten and sn.at

The Salzburger Nachrichten, founded in 1945, is one of Austria's leading regional daily newspapers and describes its digital portfolio as consisting of sn.at and salzburg24.at. The two portals serve different reading habits: sn.at carries the newspaper's subscription journalism, e-paper and archive, while Salzburg24 provides the free, fast news stream. Their coexistence under one publisher mirrors the two-speed digital strategy adopted by several Austrian regional houses in the 2010s.

Commercially, the group's digital offers have been marketed within the austria.com/plus premium network of Russmedia Digital — a notable continuity, given that Russmedia founded Salzburg24 before selling it to the Salzburg group. The 2020 marketing announcements for that network explicitly presented SN.at and Salzburg24 together as Salzburg's strongest publisher-origin digital combination.

Position in Salzburg's media market

Salzburg's media market includes the Salzburger Nachrichten group, the Salzburg edition of the Kronen Zeitung, ORF Salzburg with its regional television, radio and online services, private radio stations and community media such as Radiofabrik and FS1. Within that field Salzburg24 is the established pure-play online news brand, a position it has held since 2007 as the state's first online news portal.

Its longevity matters. Many Austrian online-only ventures of the 2000s were closed, merged or absorbed as newspaper websites; Salzburg24 instead changed owner once, kept its brand, its own newsroom and its domain, and grew into a top-twenty national portal. That continuity under two different major regional publishers — Russmedia at founding, Salzburger Nachrichten since 2012 — is unusual in Austrian digital media history.

Limits of the public record

Publicly verifiable information about Salzburg24 concentrates on its founding, its 2012 sale, its ownership, its coverage area and its measured reach. Detailed figures for current newsroom size beyond the seven staff taken over in 2012, for revenue, or for the internal division of work with sn.at are not published in independent sources, and this profile does not estimate them. The editor-in-chief listing cited above comes from German reference material and may not reflect the most recent appointments.

One genuine discrepancy should also remain on record: the exact November 2007 launch day is given as 23 November in the portal's encyclopedia entry and as 27 November in Salzburg reference material. Both dates are reported here as documented, and the seed record for this portal used 27 November 2007.

Outlook

Salzburg24's verified position is secure: a top-twenty Austrian portal by reach, the digital fast-news arm of Salzburg's leading newspaper group, a recognised qualifier for quality-journalism funding, and a brand with nearly two decades of continuous publication. Its future development will follow the group's digital strategy, in which free reach media and subscription journalism are run as complementary products for the same regional market. On the documented evidence, Salzburg24 remains the reference pure online news medium for the state of Salzburg.