The New Zealand Herald

For the officer of arms, see New Zealand Herald Extraordinary.

The New Zealand Herald

Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner	APN News & Media
Editor	Tim Murphy
Founded	1863
Political alignment	Centre-right
Headquarters	Auckland, New Zealand
Circulation	187,129 585,000 readership (June 2008)
ISSN	1170-0777
Official website	nzherald.co.nz

Front cover of the Auckland edition, Friday 2 June 2006.

The New Zealand Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Auckland, New Zealand, owned by APN News & Media. It has the largest newspaper circulation in New Zealand, peaking at over 200,000 copies in 2006, declining to 187,129 by June 2008. Despite the name, its main circulation area is the Auckland region. It is also delivered to much of the north of the North Island including Northland, Waikato and King Country.

History

The Herald was founded by William Chisholm Wilson and published its first issue on 13 November 1863. In 1876 it was merged with the newspaper The Southern Cross, owned by Alfred Horton, which was first published in 1843.

The Wilson and Horton families were both represented in the company until 1996 when Tony O'Reilly's Independent News & Media Group of Dublin purchased the Horton family's interest in the company. The Herald is now owned by APN (Australian Provincial Newspapers), which is majority-owned by Independent News & Media.

Gordon Minhinnick was a staff cartoonist from the 1930s until his retirement in the 1980s. Laurence Clark was the daily political cartoonist from 1987 to 1996, and continued to publish cartoons weekly in the Herald until 2000.

The Herald is traditionally a staid centre-right newspaper, and was given the nickname "Granny Herald" into the 1990s. This changed with the acquisition of the paper by Independent News & Media in 1996, and today, despite remaining free enterprise oriented on economic matters such as trade and foreign investment, the Herald is generally editorially progressive on international geopolitics, diplomacy, and military matters, printing material from British newspapers such as The Independent and The Observer but more recently, conservative newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph. Some ascribe the Herald's stance on the Middle East as supportive of Israel, seen most clearly in its 2003 censorship and dismissal of cartoonist Malcolm Evans following his submission of cartoons critical of Israel. On the other hand, Robert Fisk and Gwynne Dyer, commentators critical of Israel, are also regular commentators in the paper.^{[citation needed]}

Domestic stance

On domestic matters, editorial opinion is centre-right, usually supporting socially conservative values and self-reliance over social welfare, government fiscal restraint, and reducing the government's role in the New Zealand economy. In 2007, an editorial strongly disapproved of some legislation introduced by the Labour-led government, the Electoral Finance Act, to the point of overtly campaigning against the legislation.

Herald on Sunday

A compact-sized Sunday edition, the Herald on Sunday, was first published on 3 October 2004 under the editorship of Suzanne Chetwin and then, for five years, by Shayne Currie. It won Newspaper of the Year for the calendar years 2007 and 2009 and is New Zealand's second-highest-circulating weekly newspaper after the The Sunday Star-Times.

The Herald on Sunday has the fastest-growing circulation and readership among major New Zealand newspapers. It is now edited by Bryce Johns. As of March 2011 the newspaper had an estimated readership of 380,000 and circulation of roughly 100,000.

Outsourcing

In March 2007, APN NZ announced it was considering a plan to outsource the bulk of the Herald's copy editing to an Australian-owned company, Pagemasters. APN confirmed the outsourcing decision to affected staff on 19 April 2007.

Website

The online news service, originally called "Herald Online", was established in 1998 and attracts over 2.1 million users per month. It was redesigned in late 2006.

The site was named best news website at the 2007 and 2008 Qantas Media Awards, won the "best re-designed website" category at the 2007 New Zealand NetGuide Awards, and was one of seven newspaper sites named an Official Honoree in the 2007 Webby Awards. Of the more than 8,000 entries submitted for the Webby Awards, fewer than 15% were distinguished as an Official Honoree.

Regular columnists

• Deborah Coddington, Herald on Sunday
• Colin James
• Matt McCarten, Herald on Sunday
• Brian Rudman

External links

• Official website
• The New Zealand Herald (official mobile website)
• Sold on APN (for advertisers)