Q&A about New Zealand newspapers

How do the content and style of New Zealand newspapers compare to the United States?
The content seems similar, though so far, I've sampled just three of the country's 21 daily papers. Parliament opened this week in Wellington, so there's been a fair amount of space devoted to politics.
One thing I've noticed is that big stories seem to be told episodically, with the follow-ups coming on subsequent days, rather than all at once with a main story and sidebars. The government's plan to close a juvenile-justice group home in Hamilton has generated reaction stories every day for a week; the American style might be to include more comments in the initial story.

Are they making money?
All but three of the daily papers are owned by two companies, Fairfax Media and APN (Australian Provincial Newspapers) News and Media, both Australian companies (though APN is controlled in turn by an Irish company). Both companies own dailies, weeklies and magazines; Fairfax also owns Trade Me, an online auction site that combines elements of eBay and Craig's List. Both are publicly traded and will report their 2009 earnings in late February. That will be one indicator of the strength of their print media properties.

Feb 26 update: Media companies back in the black
The parent companies of most New Zealand daily newspapers reported profits last week. But it's difficult to tell from the corporate releases how well the newspapers themselves are doing.
Fairfax Media, owner of The Waikato Times, announced a profit for the six months ending Dec. 31, 2009, a turnaround from a loss in the same period in 2008. The company said online operations, including Trade Me, were doing well, while print revenues in New Zealand were “subdued,” in the words of the company’s CEO.
Meanwhile, APN News & Media, also reported a profitable year. The Sydney-based company reported growth in advertising revenue for the last three months of the year, largely from retail and national ads. The company has also cut costs by reorganizing and cutting staff. APN has centralized some of its editing and pagination functions.

Is newspaper readership declining?
I've read several pieces that suggest that newspaper circulation in New Zealand hasn't declined to the degree that it has in the United States or United Kingdom. One of the recent success stories in publishing, in fact, has been the start of a new Sunday paper in Auckland, the Herald on Sunday, which has grown to nearly 100,000 subscribers since its founding in 2004. According to the New Zealand Journalists Training Organization, 72 percent of the population reads a newspaper at least once a week. There are no local TV channels, so newspapers remain the primary source of local and regional news.

Do many people read the news online?
New Zealand papers seem about five years behind their American counterparts in putting news on the Web, perhaps reflecting lower Internet usage overall. Many rural areas still lack access to broadband and I haven't seen a single wi-fi hot spot in Hamilton, though there are several Internet cafes that charge by the hour.
The Hamilton paper, The Waikato Times, doesn't have a free-standing Web site; instead, its content is part of a corporate site that aggregates content from all of the Fairfax papers. The Herald recycles its print content to the Web, augmenting some articles with streaming video. Radio stations and the national TV channels provide news online as well; the government-owned Radio New Zealand offers several online program streams.

A favorite piece of journalese: "stoush," referring to a dispute, flap or controversy. It's common in news "intros" (what we'd call a lede), such as "Hamilton’s Frankton Market could be moved as a stoush brews between retailer Forlongs and other businesses…”

NZ newspapers: wide pages, big photos

The first thing this American noticed about New Zealand newspapers is their size. Most of the city and regional newspapers are true broadsheets, which haven’t been seen in the United States for 30 years except for imports like Britain’s Financial Times.

The two papers I read regularly are the New Zealand Herald, the country’s largest daily with a circulation of 174,000, published in Auckland, and Hamilton’s Waikato Times, with a circulation of 41,000. Both papers are 14¾ inches wide, edge to edge (in newspaper parlance, 88 picas). That makes them three inches wider than the typical American “broadsheet” such as the Lewiston Tribune or Moscow-Pullman Daily News, whose pages are 69 picas (11½ inches) wide.

The NZ papers’ page depth is almost identical to the U.S. counterpart (21-1/2 inches) so when opened at the fold, the full page looks more square than oblong. New Zealand editors use the extra space to their advantage with large headlines, spectacular photographs and fewer “jumps” (stories that start on one page and continue to another). It makes me question again the wisdom of U.S. newspapers’ collective decision to trim the width of their pages, which diminishes the visual impact of pictures and graphics. The narrower page contributes to the impression that readers are getting less for their money, too.

The papers also have more heft than their U.S. counterparts; the newsprint is thicker and page count higher. Both the Herald and Times are chock full of full-color, full-page ads from national retailers, especially their weekend editions on Saturday mornings. (Neither the Times nor the Herald comes out on Sunday, though the Times’ parent company publishes the Star Times, and the Herald’s sister paper, the tabloid Herald on Sunday, has a separate staff, similar to the British national Sunday papers.)

As for content, the New Zealand papers are heavy on sports (as are the TV networks’ evening programs), business, domestic politics and international news. Coverage of the Haiti earthquake was comprehensive, even in the Hamilton paper which usually is dominated by local news.

The fiber-glass cow in a pedestrian plaza in central Hamilton promotes the Waikato Times. (Note the Wellington boots.) Photo: Aly Lamar