The New Zealand Herald

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Email this to a friend The New Zealand Herald

The New Zealand Herald

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.^[1] 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.^[2]

History
Domestic Stance
Operational Impact of Foreign Ownership
Website
Regular columnists
Notes
External links

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.^[3] On the other hand, Robert Fisk and Gwynne Dyer, commentators critical of Israel, are also regular featured commentators on the paper.

Domestic Stance

On domestic matters it is centre-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 the past year it has strongly disapproved of some of the legislation passed by the incumbent Labour led government, notably the Electoral Finance Act.^[4]

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.

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)^[5]. 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).^[6]