After 320 years, last edition of world’s oldest national newspaper goes into press

The oldest national newspaper in the world printed its last daily edition after running for around 320 years, marking the end of an era.

Vienna-based daily newspaper, Wiener Zeitung, won't be able to print daily editions after a recent change in the law gave it the label of a print product which is not profitable.

The law, which the coalition government in Austria brought in April, stopped the legal requirement for companies to pay money for publishing public announcements in the newspaper's print edition, terminating the role of Wiener Zeitung as an official gazette.

This change in law led to the publisher's loss of income by around €18 million (approx. $19 million), as per Der Spiegel, and forced the paper to cut down its editorial staff from 55 to 20, and lay off 63 people overall.

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Online media to survive

The company will continue publishing online and is aiming at distributing a monthly print edition. However, the plan for the monthly edition is still in development.

The newspaper, which the Austrian government owns but remains editorially independent, started publishing in August 1703 and has witnessed 12 presidents, 10 kaisers and two republics. In the newspaper's first edition, it had claimed that it will providea straightforward account of the news “without any oratory or poetic gloss”.

In 1768, the newspaper reported about a concert which starred an “especially talented” 12-year-old. The boy's name was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

When Austria faced defeat in the first world war, a special edition was published in the paper which featured the last Habsburg emperor Kaiser Karl's abdication letter.

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An era comes to an end

In the last daily print edition published on Friday, the newspaper featured an editorial which blamed the new law of the government for the end of its print run. The newspaper stated, “These are stormy times for quality journalism … On more and more platforms, serious content vies for attention with fake news, cat videos and conspiracy theories.”

In April, the newspaper's circulation was just 20,000 on weekdays, although the figure doubled on weekends. Among the list of its final interviewees were Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Austrian chancellors Franz Vranitzky and Wolfgang Schüssel.

EU Commission vice-president Věra Jourova, speaking to the Austrian news agency APA, said that she was “not happy with the situation” at the newspaper. “I think the Wiener Zeitung played a good role in informing people over the years,” she added.

In its three centuries of printing, the newspaper had to shut down only once when Austria was incorporated into Hitler’s Germany and the Nazis closed the paper in 1939. The newspaper began printing again in 1945 while Austria was still under Allied occupation.

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