The New Zealand Herald

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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
Headquarters Auckland, New Zealand
Circulation 585,000 (Q3 - Q4 2007)[1]
ISSN 1170-0777
Website: nzherald.co.nz
Front cover of the Auckland edition, Friday 2 June 2006.
Front cover of the Auckland edition, Friday 2 June 2006.

The New Zealand Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Auckland, New Zealand. It is owned by APN News & Media. Circulation of the Herald peaked at over 200,000 copies in 2006, but has since gradually declined to 194706 as at September 2007.[2] 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.[3]

Contents

[edit] History

The Herald was founded in 1863 by William Chisholm Wilson and published its first edition on November 13 of that year. In 1876, The New Zealand Herald was merged with the newspaper The Southern Cross owned by Alfred Horton. The Southern Cross was first published in 1843.

The Wilson and Horton families were both represented in the company until 1996 when Sir 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, in turn, majority-owned by Independent News & Media.

Gordon Minhinnick was a staff cartoonist from the 1930s until his retirement in the 1980s.

A compact-sized Sunday edition, the Herald on Sunday, was first published on October 3, 2004 under the editorship of Suzanne Chetwin. Now edited by Shayne Currie, it is New Zealand's third-highest circulating paper.

The New Zealand Herald was traditionally seen as a staid, centre-right newspaper, and given the nickname "Granny Herald" into the 1990s. This changed with the acquisition of the paper by Independent News & Media in 1996, and today the Herald is generally editorially centre-left on international geopolitics, diplomacy, and military matters, often printing material from British newspapers such as The Independent and The Observer, while remaining free enterprise oriented on certain economic matters such as trade and foreign investment. 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.[4] On the other hand, Robert Fisk and Gwynne Dyer, commentators critical of Israel, are also regular featured commentators on the paper.

[edit] Domestic Stance

On domestic matters it is right wing, usually supporting socially conservative values and self-reliance on social welfare, government fiscal restraint, and reducing the government's role in the New Zealand economy. In recent years it has consistently shown hostility to centre-left political parties on its editorial and leader pages.[5]

The Herald's domestic political stance has been further evident since late 2007 in its vociferous campaign in opposition to the Electoral Finance Act, designed to curtail the role of large anonymous donations in election campaigns and advertising, characterising the legislation as "Democracy Under Attack".[6] During this campaign the Herald has largely rejected the relevance of the 2005 New Zealand election funding controversy that changed the course of the previous election. The revelations of secret funding of the opposition National party by Nicky Hagar, later detailed in The Hollow Men: A study in the politics of deception, were subsequently disparaged by the Herald. [7]

[edit] Operational Impact of Foreign Ownership

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 April 19, 2007.

[edit] Website

The online news service, nzherald.co.nz(originally called Herald Online) was established in 1998 and attracts over 2.1 million users per month)[8]. It was redesigned in late 2006.


The site was named best news website at the 2007 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).[9]

[edit] Regular columnists

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Nielsen Media Research National Readership Survey Results (Q1 2007 - Q4 2007), Average Issue Readership All People 10+ (February 2008). Retrieved on 2008-02-20.
  2. ^ ABC statistics
  3. ^ Herald circulation. Retrieved on 2007-11-05.
  4. ^ Furore over sacking of Kiwi cartoonist
  5. ^ "http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/466/story.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10475416"
  6. ^ Democracy about more than voting. November 2007 [1]
  7. ^ Editorial: A year when NZ politics got dirty [2]
  8. ^ Nielsen//NetRatings, NZ Market Intelligence, February & March, 2008.
  9. ^ Herald website judged best news site - New Zealand Herald, Saturday 19 May 2007

[edit] External links

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