WOZ Die Wochenzeitung

WOZ Die Wochenzeitung

Type	Weekly newspaper
Owner(s)	infolink cooperative, employees of the newspaper
Editor-in-chief	Susan Boos
Associate editor	Stefan Howald, Yves Wegelin
Founded	1981 (1981) as WochenZeitung (WoZ)
Political alignment	Centre-left, Green socialism
Language	German
Headquarters	Zürich, Switzerland
Circulation	15,867 (as of 2014)
Website	woz.ch

WOZ Die Wochenzeitung, commonly shortened to WOZ or Wochenzeitung, is a Swiss German-language weekly newspaper, published in Zürich.

History and profile

Founded as WochenZeitung (WoZ) on 1 October 1981 in Zürich, WOZ soon became one of the most important newspapers of Switzerland, based on the experiences of the German Tageszeitung (taz) and the monthly student journal Das Konzept. As in the beginning, its staff is salaried to a unit wage, and financially supported is WOZ by Pro WoZ, a booster associations, since 1984. Beginning in 1995, the former WoZ and taz are joint editors of the German-language edition of Le Monde diplomatique as a supplement of the newspapers. The WoZ content was influenced by the conjuncture of various currents of the Swiss alternative political movement, in a first phase by the youth movement of the 1980s. Because of the low proportion of advertisements, that granted a certain independence, the newspaper was periodically under-funded. A financial reboot in 2003 ended due to increased costs almost in bankruptcy. A reorganization, including in 2005 the first editorial board, but without chief editor, allowed for consolidation.

WOZ claims to be the only independent, national newspaper in German-speaking Switzerland. It belongs neither to a political party nor an association or a media company, and guarantees a critical and enigmatic quality journalism. Besides its thirty editors it also has a large and broad network of free journalists. According to the readership study MACH Basic WOZ reaches 72,000 regular readers; the daily circulation occures to 15,867 copies (WEMF 2014).

Organisation

The highest gremium of the WOZ newspapier is the plenum of the cooperative infolink, the WOZ editor. The cooperative belongs to all employees who are employed by at least fifty percent. The cooperative assets, the equity of the WOZ, consists of one-time membership fees of current and former cooperative members. Responsible for the newspaper's content, however, is the editorial meeting. Decisions of greater consequence are decided by the plenary of the cooperative members. Many staff officials are also in one or more working groups or commissions within the self-managed company with over fifty employees and an annual turnover of around four million Swiss Francs. WOZ is supported by the ProWOZ society, whom's about 800 members annually at least double the subscription amount.

See also

• Rotpunktverlag

Literature

• Carmen Berchtold, Jürg Fischer (redaction) and Gertrud Vogler (photography): Das Buch Monster: 100 Fälle aus der Praxis der Familie Monster. WoZ, Zürich 1997, ISBN 3906236021.

External links

• Official website (German)
• Bernard Degen: WochenZeitung (WOZ) in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 20 November 2013.

• ProWOZ (German)