World’s oldest national newspaper prints final edition after 320 years

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Link 1: World’s oldest national newspaper prints final edition after 320 years | Austria | The Guardian

 

The world’s oldest national newspaper has printed its last daily edition almost 320 years after it began.

 

Wiener Zeitung, a Vienna-based daily newspaper, will no longer print daily editions after a recent law change meant it had ceased to be profitable as a print product.

 

The law, which was passed in April by Austria’s coalition government, ended a legal requirement for companies to pay to publish public announcements in the print edition of the newspaper, terminating Wiener Zeitung’s role as an official gazette.

 

This change resulted in an estimated €18m (£15m) loss of income for the publisher, according to Der Spiegel, and has forced the paper to cut 63 jobs, including reducing its editorial staff from 55 to 20.

 

It will continue to publish online and is hoping to distribute a monthly print edition, although that plan is reportedly still in development.

 

The newspaper, which is owned by the Austrian government but is editorially independent, began publishing in August 1703 and has seen out 12 presidents, 10 kaisers and two republics.

 

In its first edition, it said it would provide a straightforward account of the news “without any oratory or poetic gloss”.

 

In 1768 it reported on a concert starring an “especially talented” 12-year-old. His name was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

 

When Austria was defeated in the first world war, the paper published a special edition with the abdication letter of the last Habsburg emperor, Kaiser Karl.

 

In its last daily print edition on Friday, it ran an editorial blaming the government’s new law for the end of its print run and said: “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 its circulation was just 20,000 on weekdays, although this figure doubled at weekends.

 

Arnold Schwarzenegger was one its final interviewees, along with the former Austrian chancellors Franz Vranitzky and Wolfgang Schüssel.

 

Link 2: Documents and Maps - Southland Coins & Collectibles Inc.

 

The London Gazette is one of the official journals of record of the government of the United Kingdom. It was first published as The Oxford Gazette on November 7, 1665 and claims to be the oldest surviving English newspaper and the oldest continuously published newspaper in the UK, having been first published on November 7, 1665, as The Oxford Gazette...