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