About Tag24

Tag24

TAG24 is a German regional news portal operating local newsrooms in eleven cities across the country, with its headquarters and central editorial office in Dresden. Launched in October 2014 as the website of the Saxon tabloid Morgenpost under the name Mopo24, it was renamed TAG24 in 2016 and has since grown beyond Saxony into a national network of city portals. Published by TAG24 NEWS Deutschland GmbH and part of the DDV Mediengruppe — acquired by the Hanover-based Madsack media group in 2024 — the portal belongs to the boulevard press tradition: fast, emotional, service-oriented local journalism optimised for the smartphone era.

Overview

TAG24's concept breaks with the single-homepage model of most news portals. There is no main channel: when readers open the site, they choose a local "window" for their region — Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, Magdeburg or Erfurt — and read a mix of local and national content through that lens. Each city has its own editorial team producing local news, while a national desk supplies the overregional stories. The result is a portal that feels like a local newspaper's website but operates at national scale, combining the intimacy of city reporting with the reach of a multi-city network.

The editorial style is boulevard: crime reports, accidents, consumer stories, celebrity news, service journalism and emotional human-interest pieces dominate, written in accessible language and packaged for social-media sharing. Like the Morgenpost from which it emerged, TAG24 is classified with the German tabloid press — journalism aimed at a mass audience rather than an elite one, prioritising readability, speed and proximity to readers' everyday lives.

History

TAG24 began on 3 October 2014 under the name Mopo24, conceived as the web presence of the Saxon Morgenpost, Dresden's boulevard daily. The timing was part of a broader digital push by the DDV Mediengruppe, the Dresden-based publishing house behind the Sächsische Zeitung and the Morgenpost. But the name quickly caused friction: the Hamburger Morgenpost was already operating successfully online as MOPO.de, confusion between the two "Mopos" was feared, and after tensions between the publishers, the Dresden portal was renamed tag24.de on 3 October 2016 — exactly two years after its launch.

Under the new name the portal's reach expanded beyond Saxony, and new city newsrooms were opened across Germany. By 2022 TAG24 operated, alongside its national desk, eleven local editorial offices: Berlin, Chemnitz, Dresden, Erfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Cologne, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Munich and Stuttgart. The editor-in-chief is Robert Kuhne, who had previously led the Morgenpost itself, providing continuity between the print tabloid tradition and the digital portal.

The ownership story took a significant turn in 2024. In January of that year the Madsack media group of Hanover — one of Germany's largest regional publishing houses, whose biggest limited partner is the SPD-owned Deutsche Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft — announced its intention to acquire the DDV Mediengruppe with its Sächsische Zeitung, Morgenpost titles and TAG24. After antitrust approval, the takeover took effect on 1 May 2024, making TAG24 part of the Madsack portfolio alongside the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland, the joint corporate newsroom serving dozens of regional newspapers.

Programming and Content

TAG24's content mix is the classic boulevard formula adapted for digital. Local news leads: police reports, fires and accidents, court cases, traffic disruptions, new shops and restaurants, local politics and community events. National and international news is covered in the same accessible register, with an emphasis on stories with emotional pull or practical relevance. Service journalism — weather warnings, consumer tips, money-saving advice, health information — forms a substantial part of the offering, designed to make the portal a daily utility for its readers.

The city-window structure shapes the journalism: each local newsroom cultivates sources in its city's police departments, courts, councils and communities, producing the kind of granular local coverage that national outlets cannot match. The national desk, in turn, ensures that readers in every city window also get the big stories of the day. Video, galleries and social-media-native formats are integral to the product, reflecting a newsroom built for the mobile feed rather than the printed page.

Coverage and Audience

TAG24 addresses a German-speaking mass audience, with its readership concentrated in the eleven cities where it operates newsrooms — most strongly in its Saxon heartland of Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz. Its readers are the classic tabloid audience: broad, socially mixed, interested in local affairs and everyday topics rather than in elite political debate. The portal does not publish independently audited reach figures in the sources available, so precise audience numbers are not publicly confirmed; its growth from a single-city website to an eleven-city network, however, testifies to a successful expansion.

The portal's significance in the German media landscape lies in its demonstration that boulevard journalism — long thought to be a print phenomenon in terminal decline — could be rebuilt digitally around local identity. At a time when many regional publishers were retreating from ambitious digital projects, TAG24's city-by-city expansion offered a counter-model: local news as a scalable product.

Ownership

TAG24 is published by TAG24 NEWS Deutschland GmbH, headquartered in Dresden, with Robert Kuhne as editor-in-chief and, together with Bernd Hellermann, as managing director. The company is part of the DDV Mediengruppe (Dresdner Druck- und Verlagshaus), which was acquired by the Hanover-based Madsack media group with effect from 1 May 2024. Madsack, whose largest limited partner is the SPD's Deutsche Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, is one of Germany's biggest regional media houses, and TAG24 now sits within its portfolio alongside the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland and dozens of regional newspaper titles.

From Mopo24 to a national network

The portal's name change in 2016 tells a story about German regional media. As Mopo24, the site was explicitly the digital arm of the Saxon Morgenpost — "Mopo" being the affectionate shorthand for Morgenpost papers. But the Hamburger Morgenpost's established MOPO.de had prior claim to the nickname online, confusion between the Dresden and Hamburg "Mopos" was inevitable, and tensions between the publishers made the Dresden paper's digital identity untenable. The rebrand to TAG24 on 3 October 2016 — the portal's second birthday — cut the nominal tie to the print title and gave the project a neutral, expandable brand: "Tag" (day) plus 24 hours, a name that works as well in Munich or Hamburg as in Dresden.

The expansion that followed was methodical. New city newsrooms were opened one by one — Chemnitz and Leipzig in Saxony, then Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich, Magdeburg and Erfurt — each replicating the Dresden formula: a local team with police, court and council sources, wrapped in the national desk's overregional feed. By 2022 the network counted eleven city editorial offices plus the national desk, a footprint no other German boulevard portal had attempted. The 2024 acquisition by Madsack folded this network into one of Germany's largest regional publishing groups — a group whose own biggest shareholder is the SPD's media holding company — raising the question of how the scrappy Dresden tabloid portal will evolve inside a Hanover-based corporate structure built around traditional regional dailies.

Digital Presence

The website at tag24.de is the portal's entire operation: eleven city windows, the national feed, video and service content, all designed mobile-first. The portal is heavily active on social media — Facebook, Instagram and other platforms are primary distribution channels for its shareable boulevard content — and it operates apps for on-the-go reading. For a publisher that began as a print tabloid's website in 2014, TAG24's digital-native growth into a multi-city network makes it one of the more successful German experiments in building a new journalistic brand online rather than merely extending an old one.