In 1770, Johannes Schirmer's printing company entered Wiesbaden's later lavish press landscape with a modest weekly newspaper under the unwieldy title "Hoch-Fürstliche Nassau-Saarbrück-Usingisch-privilegirte gemeinnützige Wießbader Nachrichten und Anzeige". From 1797 it was published as "Gnädigst privilegirte Wiesbader Nachrichten zur Beförderung des Nahrungsstandes", from 1806 as "Wiesbader Wochenblatt" and from 1837 as "Wiesbadener Wochenblatt". On just a few pages and with a small circulation, the newspaper published official announcements, lists of spa guests and current food prices.

Wiesbaden's first "real" newspaper was the "Rheinische Blätter", published by Johannes Weitzel and printed by Ernst Ludwig (Louis) Theodor Schellenberg. The newspaper was characterized by moderate liberalism, mostly penned by Weitzel, with articles on current affairs and commentary on the events of the day. Weitzel supported the policies of the Nassau state government. As there was no press censorship in Nassau from 1814-19, he was able to oppose it unhindered. In the areas on the left bank of the Rhine that had become Prussian after Napoleon's defeat, the "Rheinische Blätter" were well received and circulated because Weitzel stood up for the interests of the population disappointed by the Prussian government. However, as they increasingly moved closer to the Prussian government's point of view, they lost readers on the left bank of the Rhine and had to cease publication in 1820, mainly for this reason.

Until 1848, the few Wiesbadeners who were interested in reading newspapers had to rely on foreign newspapers, which mainly dealt with Nassau topics. With the revolution of 1848, the papers just shot out of the ground. The "Freie Zeitung" (FZ) made its debut on March 3, 1848 - even before the press censorship that had existed since 1819 was lifted. It initially presented itself as radically democratic and was very popular, but this diminished when its tone became more moderate. On March 10, "Der Volksfreund" followed, which was still to the left of the FZ under the editorship of Georg Philipp Lippe. One day later, the first issue of the moderate-constitutional "Taunusblätter" appeared. This was followed on 13 March by the "Nassauische Zeitung" (NZ), edited by the lawyer Karl Braun on a part-time basis and printed by Wilhelm Friedrich, which occupied the center of the political spectrum.

The "Nassauische Allgemeine Zeitung" (NAZ) appeared from April 1 under the management of Wilhelm Heinrich von Riehl. The NAZ was the mouthpiece of the liberal citizens of Wiesbaden and the official newspaper of the later Hergenhahn government. The editors Braun and von Riehl, who both advocated a constitutional form of government, used ruthless means to fight for the market leadership of their papers and for their personal reputations. The government supported Riehl by transferring Braun to St. Goarshausen. On January 1, 1849, only the FZ and the NAZ still existed among the newly founded newspapers, and the latter was only able to survive thanks to government support.

When von Riehl left Wiesbaden in 1850, the NAZ dragged on under the editorship of Dr. Aloysius Boczek until 1854. The FZ, on the other hand, enjoyed a long life, albeit under changing titles, owners and political directions. The "Mittelrheinische Zeitung" (MRZ), which emerged from the FZ in 1852, was now the only political newspaper in Nassau to benefit from the demise of its former competitors. Fearing the reinvigorated reactionary government of Duke Adolph of Nassau, its stance became increasingly moderate. However, the government was not satisfied with an adapted newspaper; it wanted an official organ at its complete disposal and therefore supported the founding of the "Nassauische Zeitung" in 1856, which was discontinued after only two years.

Under the leadership of Karl Braun, a member of the state parliament, and the lawyer Friedrich Lang, the oppositional Nassau liberals strove for a journalistic mouthpiece. Together with their comrade-in-arms August Schellenberg and Adam Trabert as editor, they founded the "Rhein-Lahn-Zeitung" (RLZ) printed by Schellenberg in 1859. When the RLZ's license was revoked in 1861 for no good reason, this event was an occasion to denounce the Nassau government's rigid methods of suppressing the expression of opinion throughout Germany. At the same time as the RLZ was banned, the government granted a license to the "Wiesbadener Zeitung" (WZ), a newspaper that was friendly to it; the WZ was soon replaced by the "Neue Wiesbadener Zeitung", which was only able to survive until 1864. The government was able to cope with the loss because a replacement was on hand in the form of the "Nassauische Landeszeitung". Its end came in 1866 with Prussia's victory in the war against Austria. However, the MRZ was not able to enjoy its position as the sole Wiesbaden newspaper for long, as the "Neue Mittelrheinische Zeitung" had split off from it, but had to give up just one year later.

The turbulence in the Wiesbaden press landscape continued under changed conditions during the Prussian era. For political newspapers, the tax levied on each copy ("newspaper stamp") and the obligation to pay a deposit were a heavy burden. Prussian press law had been more liberal than that of Nassau, but Bismarck knew how to make life difficult for unwelcome publishers and editors. Influence was exerted preferably in the form of concessions. Above all, the numerous pure advertising papers were exempt from the obligation to pay a deposit and newspaper stamp even if they published propaganda articles that were supplied to them free of charge by Bismarck's "Literary Office". Only the Wiesbadener Tagblatt (WT), founded in 1852, and the "Biebrich-Mosbacher Tagespost" resisted this and many other temptations in the former Nassau territory. When the obligation to pay a deposit was introduced in 1868 for local papers that published political articles, many publishers did not take this step. In the mid-1880s, only a minority of the 60 or so papers wrote pro-government or conservative articles.

The Prussian government used the "Herzoglich Nassauischen allgemeinen Landeskalender", renamed "Allgemeiner Kalender für Nassau" by Prussia, which each of the approximately 50,000 families had to hold by law, for propaganda purposes, as had the Nassau government before it. In November 1866, the "Rheinischer Kurier" (RK), the first Wiesbaden newspaper, received a license from Prussia; in 1874, the RK and MRZ were merged under the name "Rheinischer Kurier. Mittelrheinische Zeitung" were united. The FZ of 1848 lived on in this paper. In addition to Dr. Bernhard Wilhelm Scholz, the newspaper was edited by Dr. Seibt, a man who was on the payroll of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. In 1905, Eduard Bartling acquired the paper and made it the mouthpiece of the National Liberal Party.

The series of short-lived newspapers continued with the "Allgemeine Zeitung für Nassau", founded in 1867, which changed its name to "Rheinische Volkszeitung" (RV) a year later and was aimed at a Catholic readership, as the RV did not live to see the year 1870. The "Wiesbadener Nachrichten", also launched in 1867, did not even survive its founding year.

Almost all subsequent Wiesbaden newspapers had a longer life expectancy. Powerful printing presses had been invented and, together with revolutionary innovations in paper production, led to massive cost reductions in newspaper production. Now even low-income sections of the population could afford newspapers. In addition, press censorship was almost completely abolished after the founding of the German Reich in 1874. In Wiesbaden, too, there was a sudden increase in the number of titles that existed simultaneously. In 1874-92, the conservative "Nassauische Volkszeitung" appeared, which agitated against "social democracy and the priests" and vehemently supported the "Kaiser and Reich". 1875-98 saw the publication of the "Wiesbadener Anzeigenblatt", which wrestled the right of first publication of the coveted official "Bekanntmachungen der Polizeidirektion" from the political daily newspapers. The "Wiesbadener Zeitung" (1877-85) supported Bismarck's policies, while the "Wiesbadener Nachrichten" (1884/85) considered itself to be non-partisan.

With the "Wiesbadener Generalanzeiger" (WG), published by the Wiesbadener Verlagsanstalt, Wiesbaden had also had an inexpensive, politically neutral family newspaper since 1885, which, in contrast to the opinion press, was largely financed by advertisements. In addition to political news, the WG offered its readers an extensive entertainment section. In the 1880s, the WT, which had previously been purely an advertising paper, also began to develop into a newspaper of the Generalanzeiger type. With the appointment of Walther Schulte vom Brühl as editor-in-chief (1889), it battled with the WG and the RK for market leadership in Wiesbaden.

It speaks for the purchasing power available in Wiesbaden that other daily newspapers were able to survive alongside these papers. The "Wiesbadener Presse" (1886-99) was a conservative opinion paper that advocated absolute monarchy. Another opinion paper was the conservative "Wiesbadener Volksblatt" (1888-1903), which was close to the Center. The social democratic "Volksstimme" was published from 1892, was banned by the National Socialists from 1933-45 and was briefly revived in 1948. Although the "Wiesbadener Bürgerzeitung" (1905-34) was not a political daily newspaper as the organ of the Haus- und Grundbesitzerverein, it is mentioned here because it acted as a competitor on the advertising market.

From 1908, the RK called itself the "Wiesbadener Zeitung" (WZ) and now carried the former title "Rheinischer Kurier" as a subtitle. In 1912, the WZ was taken over by Wiesbadener Verlagsanstalt, in which Eduard Bartling was the main shareholder. The WZ emphasized its descent from the "Freie Zeitung" of 1848. In 1912, the "Wiesbadener Warte", which was close to the Protestant Church, was founded and merged with the "Frankfurter Warte" in 1913.

During the occupation after the First World War, the French "Le Médiateur" (The Mediator) attempted to improve economic relations in 1920-24. The anti-Semitic newspaper "Rheinischer Beobachter" with its office in Biebrich remained an episode (published only in 1921). In 1922, the WG called itself "Wiesbadener Neueste Nachrichten" with the subtitle "Wiesbadener Generalanzeiger", only to merge with the WZ the following year to present itself as the "Neue Wiesbadener Zeitung" (NWZ). Both papers had previously belonged to the Wiesbadener Verlagsanstalt. The NWZ supported the interests of the bourgeois parties in domestic politics and kept its distance from the French occupying power, which is why it was repeatedly prevented from being published. In 1930, Gustav Geisel acquired the NWZ and renamed it the "Wiesbadener Zeitung" (WZ).

In 1927, the NSDAP appeared on the Wiesbaden press market with its organ "Nassauer Beobachter". Before the paper mutated into a daily newspaper in 1930 under the title "Rheinwacht" (RW), it was initially only published fortnightly, then weekly. The RW was banned from publication several times; from 1931 it was called the "Nassauer Volksblatt" (NV), to which Gustav Geisel ceded the WZ in 1936 and from which the NS paper also took over the business premises on the corner of Bahnhofstrasse and Rheinstrasse. Only this National Socialist newspaper and the WT were now published in Wiesbaden. For "war-related reasons", these two newspapers were merged to form the "Wiesbadener Zeitung" on June 30, 1943.

The paper disappeared with the invasion of American troops at the end of March 1945. Until the Wiesbadener Kurier (WK) was founded in October 1945, Wiesbaden was a completely newspaper-free city for the first time since 1770. In December 1948, Gustav Geisel brought out the "WZ am Abend" as a tabloid, but soon realized that Wiesbaden was not the place for a paper of this genre. The Mainzer Verlagsanstalt (since 1992 Verlagsgruppe Rhein Main) had more success with its district edition of the "Allgemeine Zeitung" (AZ), the "Wiesbadener Nachrichten" (WN).

Like all newspapers published in the American occupation zone after 1933, the WT was not allowed to reappear until 1949. While retaining its name, it joined the "Allgemeine Zeitung" published by the Mainzer Verlagsanstalt (now the Rhein Main publishing group). The local editorial office remained in Wiesbaden. Today, WK and WT are published by the "Rhein-Main-Presse" publishing house and reside together in the former Tagblatt building, now Pressehaus, in Langgasse. WT and WK are currently published in identical versions, apart from the title head.