Daily newspaper "taz" soon no longer a daily printed newspaper

The publishing cooperative behind the alternative-left "taz" announced on Saturday that it would be transforming itself from a daily newspaper into a weekly newspaper in just over a year's time. From October 17, 2025, readers will be supplied with a website and e-paper version of the newspaper during the week.

In the future, however, only the "Wochentaz", which is published on Saturdays, will be printed. This makes taz the first nationwide daily newspaper to say goodbye to newsstands. In a press release, the publishing house's management and editors-in-chief expressed confidence that this step would be supported by readers.

taz still relies on a voluntary payment model

The taz is Germany's smallest national daily newspaper and has suffered severe financial difficulties several times in its 45 years of publication. It was the first German daily newspaper to launch a website in 1995. Since 2018, the publishing cooperative and editorial team have been working on making the daily newspaper primarily digital and sharing more of the costs with its numerous online readers.

Unlike many other publishers, the content of taz is still all freely accessible. Readers have been asked to make voluntary payments since 2011, followed by almost 38,000 voluntary payers. Their contributions – are currently around 260,000 euros – but would not cover the total costs by far.

Only weekend print edition in future

Subscribers, who will only receive the weekly print edition in the future, contribute the lion's share. In the second quarter of 2024, "taz" had just under 34,000 print and e-paper subscribers.

The newspaper, known for its often bitingly ironic front pages, is historically closely linked to the emergence of various initiatives in the political and technical spectrum. It was itself created as a result of the so-called TUNIX Congress in 1978, at which social issues were discussed by left-wing grassroots initiatives, and in 1981, in the context of the subsequent TUWAT Congress, it became the birthplace of the Chaos Computer Club as a home for socially interested "Komputerfrieks".

For decades, its own relationship to digitization was shaped by internal disputes and events that shook its trust in computers: First, the taz was processed in computers used by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution – and later employees were spied on by an internal perpetrator.

(nen)