It’s not the ups-and-downs of readership returns – some went down, and others like Stuff’s Sunday Star-Times and NZME’s Bay of Plenty Times, rose – so much as the more than 2.7 million New Zealanders who read newspapers that matter.

New readership figures released by Roy Morgan cover the 12 months to last December, and show 2.73 million New Zealanders aged 14+ (64.4 per cent) now read or access newspapers in an average seven-day period via print or online, with 1.71 million reading magazines, 1.3 per cent more than a year ago.

The New Zealand Herald is again ahead despite a small fall in readership – its cross-platform audience of 1.72 million almost five times than of next placed Dominion Post – but the readership of other geographically-focussed mastheads mounts up.

Behind the NZME flagship and Stuff’s Dominion Post are the privately-owned Otago Daily Times, Stuff’s The Press, Sunday Star-Times – which was up 5.4 per cent – and Waikato Times, and NZME’s Bay of Plenty Times (another improver, up 4.4 per cent) and Northern Advocate. Stuff’s Taranaki Daily News – which gained 1.8 per cent – rounds out the top ten.

Other newspapers to increase their total cross-platform audiences during 2023 included the Manawatu Standard (up 7.9 per cent), the Sunday News (up 14.5 per cent)) and the Nelson Mail (up 13.3 per cent).

Top 10 Newspapers – Total 7 Day Cross-Platform Audience (Print & Online)

*Cross-Platform Audience is the number of New Zealanders who have read or accessed individual newspaper content via print or online. Print is net readership in an average 7 days. Online is net readership online in an average 7 days.

Some four out of five of the magazines measured, 38 of them, increased their print readership in 2023.

The Roy Morgan figures list driving magazine AA Directions as the most widely read. Its average issue readership of 379,000 was up 63,000 on a year ago. Another star performer was New Zealand Listener which put on 37,000 to 218,000, up 37,000.

Fourth placed NZ Woman’s Day increased its print readership by 14,000 to 131,000 just ahead of the fifth-placed KiaOra (Air New Zealand’s inflight magazine) which increased its print readership by 50,000 to 125,000 as New Zealanders returned to travel after pandemic-era border restrictions fully ended in October 2022.

New Zealand’s Top 10 Magazines by Average Issue Print Readership