Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung

The West German Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ ) is the largest regional newspaper in Germany. It was founded on April 3, 1948 and has its headquarters in Essen and partly in Dortmund. The WAZ appears with 28 local editions in the entire core - Ruhr area. The support is not reported separately within the newspapers that belong in North Rhine- Westphalia to the WAZ media group and is by publishing information on the weekend at 580,000 copies. According to a media report, the number of copies sold was in July 2009 at 397 145 copies.

Editor in chief since 2005 Ulrich Reitz, who has held this post at the Rheinische Post. A total of about 320 editors and photographers working in different working arrangements at WAZ. In addition to the central editorial office in Essen, there are 23 local offices.

Founding editor of the daily newspaper were Erich Brost and Funke Jacob. The newspaper is published in the newspaper publishing Ruhr GmbH & Co. KG food. From the germ cell WAZ grew up in decades, the international WAZ media group, which operates according to a majority takeover by the Funke family since 2013 as the spark media group. Managing Director of the publishing house as the entire Group are Bodo Hombach and Christian Nienhaus.

WAZ has changed considerably their performance over the years. Thus, it was observed that the title page and the second page of the WAZ had been extended as part of a restructuring with a permanent celebrity column. In addition, the social part increased, while academic and political content was partially reduced.

Criticism

At the end of 2006, the WAZ included some local offices in the northern Ruhr area. Because in return, other newspaper companies, like the farmer -Verlag, local offices have shut down in cities where there is WAZ publications who was criticized that the publishers would split the appearance areas. This would greatly reduce the newspaper diversity in the individual cities. The WAZ denied territorial agreements. Journalists WAZ and the other relevant publishers demonstrated against these plans over these demonstrations has not been reported in the WAZ.