About Schaumburger Nachrichten

Schaumburger Nachrichten

The Schaumburger Nachrichten (SN) is the regional daily newspaper for the Schaumburg district in Lower Saxony, published Monday through Saturday with headquarters in Stadthagen. Founded in 1974 from the merger of the regional editions of the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung and the Hannoversche Presse, the paper is an 80-percent subsidiary of the Madsack media group of Hanover. With around 9,200 sold copies (IVW, 2nd quarter of 2026) and a market share of roughly 50 percent, the SN is the market leader in the Schaumburg district, competing with the Schaumburger Zeitung of Rinteln and the Schaumburg-Lippische Landes-Zeitung of Bückeburg.

Overview

The Schaumburger Nachrichten appear six times a week in Stadthagen, the district town of Schaumburg — the district between Hanover, Minden and Hameln, formed in 1977 from the former districts of Schaumburg-Lippe and Grafschaft Schaumburg. The paper is published by the Schaumburger Nachrichten Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG of Stadthagen, an 80-percent subsidiary of the Verlagsgesellschaft Madsack of Hanover — one of Germany's large regional media groups, whose titles include the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, the Leipziger Volkszeitung, the Ostsee-Zeitung, the Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung and the Kieler Nachrichten. The paper's editor-in-chief is Marc Fügmann.

With 9,212 sold copies (IVW 2/2026, Monday–Saturday) and a subscription share of 92.6 percent, the SN has lost 41.1 percent of its circulation since 1998 — the familiar trajectory of the German regional press — but it remains the leading newspaper of the Schaumburg district with a market share of around 50 percent. The paper is a partner in the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) — Madsack's national editorial network headquartered in Hanover — which supplies the paper's mantle: national and international news, business, culture and sport produced by one of Germany's largest regional newsrooms.

The paper maintains editorial offices in Stadthagen and Bad Nenndorf, covering the district's two centres: Stadthagen, the district town with its Renaissance castle and historic old town, and the eastern part of the district around Bad Nenndorf, the spa town on the Deister hills. The readership is the classic audience of the Lower Saxon local press: families, commuters to Hanover, local officials, club members and readers who value the paper's dense local reporting. In the Rinteln area the SN competes with the Schaumburger Zeitung, in the Bückeburg area with the Schaumburg-Lippische Landes-Zeitung — the three-paper competition of the Schaumburg district, unusual for a rural district of this size.

History

The Schaumburger Nachrichten were founded in 1974 — late by the standards of the German local press — when the regional editions of the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung and the Hannoversche Presse (the SPD paper brought into the Madsack publishing house, today the Neue Presse) were merged. The merger created a dedicated daily newspaper for the Schaumburg district, published from Stadthagen as an 80-percent Madsack subsidiary. The founding reflected the press concentration of the 1970s: rather than maintaining competing regional editions of Hanover papers, Madsack created a single district paper with its own identity.

From its Stadthagen base, the SN established itself as the district's market leader, building a circulation that long exceeded 15,000 copies and a market share of around half the district's newspaper readers. The paper's partnership in the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland gave it access to Madsack's national journalism: the RND, headquartered in Hanover, produces the mantle pages for the Madsack group's newspapers — national politics from Berlin, the business section, culture, sport and the magazine supplements — while the SN's own newsrooms in Stadthagen and Bad Nenndorf produce the local pages.

Like the entire German regional press, the SN has faced the structural decline of print circulation in the digital age: from the post-war subscription boom to today's 9,212 copies, the paper has lost more than 40 percent of its sold circulation since 1998, declining by an average of 4.3 percent per year over the past decade. The response has been Madsack's digital investment: the sn-online.de portal, the e-paper editions, the SN sonntag app and the SN Media Store — the standard repertoire of the group's digital transformation, applied to the district paper.

Coverage and Content

The SN's local pages cover the Schaumburg district in depth: the district town of Stadthagen with its Weser Renaissance castle, the historic old town and the St. Martini church with its princely mausoleum; the spa town of Bad Nenndorf with its historic spa gardens; Bückeburg, the former residence town of the Princes of Schaumburg-Lippe; Rinteln, the Weser town with its university history; the district's villages, the town and municipal councils, the district council, the local courts, the schools, the churches, the police reports, and the dense network of clubs and associations — from sports clubs and shooting associations to the traditional societies of the Schaumburg villages.

The paper's reporting beats reflect the district's character: the commuter relationship with Hanover — many of the district's residents work in the state capital — the spa economy of Bad Nenndorf, the Weser tourism around Rinteln, and the agricultural hinterland. The mantle pages from the RND provide the wider context: national and international news, the business section, culture and the sports pages with their coverage of Hannover 96 and regional professional sport. The combination is the standard German regional newspaper formula: the local paper for identity and community, the RND mantle for the world beyond the district. The paper also serves as a medium for the area's official notices, and its family notices make it the chronicle of the district's social life.

Organization and Ownership

The Schaumburger Nachrichten are published by the Schaumburger Nachrichten Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG of Stadthagen, an 80-percent subsidiary of the Verlagsgesellschaft Madsack GmbH & Co. KG of Hanover. Madsack is one of Germany's large regional media groups, with the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung (96,552 copies), the Neue Presse, the Leipziger Volkszeitung (85 percent), the Ostsee-Zeitung, the Lübecker Nachrichten, the Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung (71.61 percent), the Kieler Nachrichten, the Göttinger Tageblatt and around a dozen other titles. The SN's editor-in-chief is Marc Fügmann.

The paper is a partner in the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND), Madsack's national editorial network, which supplies the mantle pages — the group's answer to the economics of national journalism: one Berlin-based newsroom serving the group's newspapers across Germany. The SN's own newsrooms in Stadthagen and Bad Nenndorf produce the local pages within the group's editorial organization. Advertising sales are handled through the SN Media Store and the group's structures, with the paper's reach — 9,212 sold copies, 92.6 percent subscriptions — forming the basis of its media data.

Digital Presence

The Schaumburger Nachrichten's digital home is sn-online.de, the paper's online portal within the Madsack group's digital network — one of the established regional news sites of Lower Saxony. The portal carries the day's news from the Schaumburg district, including the SN's local reporting from Stadthagen and Bad Nenndorf, alongside the RND's regional, national and international coverage. Readers can access the paper as an e-paper — the digital replica of the printed edition — and the portal offers breaking news, photo galleries, videos and interactive features.

Madsack's digital strategy serves all the group's titles: the SN sonntag app, the e-paper editions, newsletters and social media channels distribute the day's stories, and the papers' journalists use the digital platforms for reader interaction. For a district daily with 9,200 print copies, the digital platforms are increasingly the growth story: the e-paper preserves the complete local edition in digital form, and the sn-online.de portal keeps the Schaumburger Nachrichten present in the digital media habits of the district — including the Hanover commuters who read their home district's news on the S-Bahn. The three-paper competition of the Schaumburg district increasingly plays out online, where the SN's digital offering competes with the portals of its Rinteln and Bückeburg rivals.