Aargauer Zeitung celebrates its tenth birthday

The Aargauer Zeitung (AZ) celebrated its 10th anniversary last Saturday with a special supplement. The AZ was created from the merger of arch-rivals Aargauer Tagblatt and Badener Tagblatt. The first issue appeared on November 4, 1996. The venture has paid off," says AZ publisher Peter Wanner in the editorial of the supplement. Over the past 10 years, the AZ has established itself as a major journalistic force both inside and outside the Aargau region. Concerns were expressed during the merger that media diversity would suffer. President Moritz Leuenberger countered this in an interview with the AZ on Saturday, stating that media diversity does not only depend on the number of publications. The concentration of the media is therefore not all bad. The larger the newspaper publishers are, the larger the editorial teams they can afford. A uniform mishmash is often the result of laziness on the part of journalists: when they all copy from each other," said Leuenberger in the interview.
The AZ has a circulation of 104,235 copies. It has undergone several conceptual and design reforms in the last ten years. Since the regional supplements were converted to tabloid format in 2004, eight regional editions have been produced daily. The AZ editorial office is based in Baden.
Since 2002, AZ has been supplying the Mittelland Zeitung (MZ) section to the Solothurner Zeitung, Oltner Tagblatt, Zofinger Tagblatt and Limmattaler Tagblatt. The Basellandschaftliche Zeitung has been the fifth partner since September 16. With a total circulation of 210,275 copies, the MZ ranks third among newspapers sold in Switzerland. The MZ's cooperation model also includes the advertising section.