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»Wiener Zeitung«: When the newspaper was founded in 1703, the Turks had been from Vienna for just 20 years
Photo: imago stock & people / SKATA / imago images
The longest-lived daily newspaper in the world is produced in Vienna's Schlachthof district.
There, on the third floor of a functional cube made of concrete and glass, sits Walter Hämmerle, editor-in-chief of the »Wiener Zeitung«, with a view over the roofs of the capital.
His topic this morning: How he wants to prevent his venerable paper from dying in its 318th year of existence.
Hämmerle has the fresh off the press edition in front of him.
In it, the Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is accused of "public staging" in vaccination issues.
The author of the leading article: Hämmerle himself. This is remarkable in that he, the editor-in-chief, was officially promoted to office by the Chancellor - the Wiener Zeitung is one hundred percent owned by the Republic of Austria.
Your senior editor is, if you will, subordinate to the holder of the power of government.
War news and imperial hunt
When the newspaper was founded in 1703, the Turks under Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pascha had disappeared from Vienna for just 20 years and Emperor Joseph I ruled "With Your Roman Imperial Most Gracious Privilegio" the paper originally called "Vienna Diary" promised with immediate effect To report "everything imaginable".
They started with war news from Lake Garda and with the listing of the deer hunted by the imperial hand during a drive hunt.
"I'll do everything I can to ensure that my tombstone doesn't read 'Last Editor-in-Chief of the Wiener Zeitung'."
Walter Haemmerle
But what is it like to run a newspaper that began with the human rights declaration of the French revolutionaries in 1789, through Adolf Hitler's triumphal procession to Heldenplatz in Vienna in 1938 ("The German people have awakened, the German nation's spring has dawned") to the present Describes world events for centuries?
"When I took office in 2018, I made a promise," says Hämmerle.
"I'll do everything I can to ensure that my tombstone doesn't read 'Last Editor-in-Chief of the Wiener Zeitung'."
»Not remotely controlled by click algorithms«
At the moment there are indications that Hämmerle has to break his word.
Chancellor Kurz of the conservative ÖVP, who governs jointly with the Greens, has had the abolition of mandatory advertisements stipulated in the coalition agreement - the company news in the official gazette section of the Wiener Zeitung.
The announcements make up 18 million euros a year on the publisher's income side.
If this balance sheet item were wholly or partially omitted because the mandatory advertisements according to the new EU Directive 2019/1151 may in future be done digitally, the »Wiener Zeitung« with its 45 full-time editors would suddenly be on the brink of collapse.
Does the government accept the end with approval?
“The decision-makers don't give us the feeling that what we're doing here is absolutely worth preserving,” says Hämmerle: “With the necessary political will, the survival of this small but fine daily newspaper of the republic could be ensured.” The “Wiener Zeitung” "Is a brand that shouldn't be released so easily for" junking ":" We deliver hardcore quality reporting and diversity, we ask about relevance, we focus on decelerating and don't let click algorithms control us remotely. "
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Indeed, the "Wiener" delivers solid international reporting and sophisticated features at the bargain price of one euro per copy.
That alone can count as merit within the manageable Austrian press landscape, in which small-format tabloids are given particularly generous attention by the public sector with paid advertisements and press funding.
"We can't just inject money," says the Greens' media spokeswoman - as if it hadn't been done for years in a different way with newspapers of significantly lower quality but greater reach.
The Wiener Zeitung has a good 10,000 readers during the week, four times as many on the weekend.
Then the paper is offered in the industry's internal "Klau-Tascherl" plastic containers on street corners for voluntary payment.
Celebrities protest against the end
"One should actually assume that the owners are proliferating with a jewel like the Wiener Zeitung," says Hämmerle, "but that is not the case."
At the moment the government has pressed the "pause button", an immediate closure of the paper is off the table for now.
At the same time, public resistance is growing: celebrities such as former Federal President Heinz Fischer and the President of the Salzburg Festival, Helga Rabl-Stadler, are calling for the newspaper to continue.
A petition of the same name was signed by more than 3,300 people within a few days.
Is that enough?
He feared that the paper from 1703 would be "phased out" for a while until the public outrage subsided - then it would be closed.
However, a change of ownership does not have to be the end, says Hämmerle, a patron could find himself: "The› Wiener Zeitung ‹is a brand and I think I know that there is definitely interest in this brand."
