New player appears on newspaper market
Four local dailies have joined forces to become one of the main players on the newspaper and advertising market.
The Mittelland-Zeitung has a circulation of almost 200,000 copies.
As of January 3 the local and regional newspapers, Aargauer Zeitung, Oltner Tagblatt, Solothurner Zeitung and Zofinger Tagblatt, are jointly publishing their pages with international and national news, as well as the business and arts sections.
However, the publishers said the four titles would remain independent local and regional papers and continue to be printed under their own names, but they would have a banner added to the respective newspaper logos.
The papers cover a region in German-speaking Switzerland between Zurich, Basel and the capital, Bern.
The owners said they hoped to attract more advertisements and remain competitive in an increasingly embattled newspaper market. Two free newspapers were launched in the German-speaking part of the country last year.
Blick, 24 Heures and Corriere
According to official figures the market leaders in German-speaking Switzerland are the mass-circulation newspaper, Blick, and the free sheet, 20 Minuten, with circulations of about 300,000 copies each.
In the French-speaking part of the country the daily, 24 heures, tops the list with a circulation of about 88,000 copies, while Il Corriere del Ticino is the biggest daily in Italian-speaking Switzerland.
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