Type Daily newspaper Owner(s) NZZ Mediengruppe Publisher Veit V. Dengler | Format Swiss Founder(s) Salomon Gessner Editor-in-chief Eric Gujer | |
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The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ, English: "New Journal of Zurich") is a Swiss, German-language daily newspaper, published by the NZZ Mediengruppe in Zurich.
Contents
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung was founded in 1780. It is seen as having been a precursor in objectivity and in-depth treatment of serious news, combined with editorials, and coverage of cultural news. Its high standards were emulated by other prestige newspapers that followed.
Today it continues to have a reputation as a high-quality newspaper and as the Swiss newspaper of record, the newspaper is known for its objectivity and detailed reports on international affairs, stock exchange, and for the intellectual, in-depth style of its articles.
History and profile
One of the oldest newspapers still published, it originally appeared as Zürcher Zeitung, edited by the Swiss painter and poet Salomon Gessner, on 12 January 1780, and was renamed as Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1821.
Aside from the switch from its Blackletter typeface in 1946, the newspaper has changed little since the 1930s. Only since 2005 has it added color pictures, much later than most mainstream papers. The emphasis is on international news, business, finance, and high culture. Features and lifestyle stories are kept to a minimum.
Politically, the newspaper has been positioned close to the liberal Free Democratic Party of Switzerland since its early period. It has a liberal and centre-right orientation.
Circulation
The circulation of Neue Zürcher Zeitung was 18,100 copies in 1910. It rose to 47,500 copies in 1930 and 66,600 copies in 1950.
In 1997 Neue Zürcher Zeitung had a circulation of 162,330 copies. Its circulation was 169,000 copies in 2000. The circulation of the paper was 166,000 copies in 2003. The 2006 circulation of the paper was 146,729 copies. Its circulation was 139,732 copies in 2009. In 2010 the paper had a circulation of 136,894 copies.
Weekend edition
In 2002, the newspaper launched a weekend edition, NZZ am Sonntag (NZZ on Sunday). The weekend edition has its own editorial staff and contains more soft news and lifestyle issues than its weekday counterpart, as do most Swiss weekend newspapers. Its circulation was 121,204 copies in 2006.
NZZ am Sonntag was awarded the European Newspaper of the Year in the category of weekly newspaper by the European Newspapers Congress in 2012.
Archives
In 2005, the complete run of the newspaper's first 225 years was scanned from microfilm. A total of two million images comprising seventy terabytes, and its Blackletter type was scanned – using optical character recognition – at a total cost of €600,000 (or €0.30 per image). The result is a searchable digital archive, only publicly accessible on site.
The digitization was carried out by an institute of the German research organization Fraunhofer Society – the Institute for Media Communication (since 2006, the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems), headquartered in Sankt Augustin, North Rhine-Westphalia.
Award
Neue Zürcher Zeitung was the recipient of the 1979 Erasmus Prize.