The Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) is a commercial newspaper from Essen, Germany, published by Funke Mediengruppe.

[1] Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung was founded by Erich Brost and first published 3 April 1948.

[3] After the turn of the millennium, the WAZ came under economic pressure in the face of media change, so that several cost-cutting programs were adopted and editorial offices were closed.

WAZ's editorial independence was also gradually reduced: national reporting was outsourced to a Funke central editorial office in Berlin in 2015, while a Funke-wide "competence center" for sports was established in Essen in 2016.

While DerWesten was transformed into a tabloid site, the digital content of the WAZ editorial offices has since been published on waz.de again.