The Rheinische Post is a major German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 regional daily newspaper, published since 1946 by the Rheinische Post Verlagsgesellschaft mbH company.

With an average circulation of about 400,000 and its headquarters in Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

, the paper is especially dominant in the western part of North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with four of the country's ten largest cities. The state was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, both formerly part of Prussia. Its capital is Düsseldorf. The state is currently run by a coalition of the...

.

Owners

The newspaper is one of the allied new foundations in the post-World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 era. NSDAP-opponents Karl Arnold, Anton Betz, Erich Wenderoth and (soon resigned) Friedrich Vogel received a British newspaper licence. Nowadays the newspaper belongs to the Arnold, Betz, Droste, Alt and Ebel families (last updated: July 2008).

Distribution

The core distribution area stretches from the Bergischen Land

Bergisches Land

The Bergisches Land is a low mountain range region within the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany, east of Rhine river, south of the Ruhr. The landscape is shaped by woods, meadows, rivers and creeks and contains over 20 artificial lakes...

 to the Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 border. There are 31 local editions, among them other regional newspapers, like the Neuß-Grevenbroicher Zeitung, the Benrather Tageblatt and the Bocholter-Borkener Volksblatt, which have their own regional news pages. The Rheinische Post is available at kiosks as well as through subscriptions.

Editorial staff

Sven Gösmann has been the editor

Editor in chief

An editor-in-chief is a publication's primary editor, having final responsibility for the operations and policies. Additionally, the editor-in-chief is held accountable for delegating tasks to staff members as well as keeping up with the time it takes them to complete their task...

 since July 2005 (he was the vice-editor of the Bild in Hamburg).
Horst Thoren has been vice-editor since 1998.
Regional editorial staff give their opinions in news articles.

Former editors

Dr. Joachim Sobotta, was editor from 1969 to 1997, he had a large impact on the style of the newspaper.
Sven Gösmann's predecessor, Ulrich Reitz, is now editor of the Westdeutschen Allgemeinen Zeitung

Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung

The Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung is a leading commercial newspaper from Essen, Germany, published by WAZ-Mediengruppe.It was founded by Erich Brost and first published 3 April 1948....

; Reitz accomplished a range of editorial reforms and cancelled the dpa

Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH is a news agency founded in 1949 in Germany. Based in Hamburg, it has grown to be a major worldwide operation serving print media, radio, television, online, mobile phones, and national news agencies. News is available in German, English, Spanish, and Arabic.The DPA...

-ticker..

Caricatures

Romulus Candea created political caricutures in the Seventies and Eighties. Nik Ebert assisted him from 1985, with emphasis on the local politics of Mönchengladbach. Nik Ebert also started the comic Düssel-Möwe (which portrays the adventures of an arrogant selfish seagull from Düsseldorf and his bird friends) in the Düsseldorf regional editions.

Internet presence

The Rheinische Post is called rp-online and adds recent news to the print edition. Links lead to the reader portal Opinio and the scene portal Tonight as well as the online portal Kalaydo.

Opinion reader portal

This portal was launched in early 2005. Its readers can publish their own articles and thoughts. The first printed edition of Opinion, which consisted of the best articles by readers, was first published on 16 February 2005. It was distributed as a monthly supplement

Supplement (publishing)

A supplement is a publication that has a role secondary to that of another preceding or concurrent publication.A follow-on publication complements its predecessor, either by bringing it up-to-date , or by otherwise enhancing the predecessor's coverage of a particular topic or subject matter, as in...

 in the newspaper. This supplement has been discontinued. A page of Opinion articles now appear once a week on an own page in the newspaper. Opinion was awarded a prize for its connection between the internet and printed media.

“Tonight”

The RP Online also runs a scene portal called Tonight. It reports on the night-life in Düsseldorf in print and photographs. Readers are informed of upcoming events. The portal was relaunched in November 2007.