It's black and white - Herald's the most read

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You are reading the hottest property in newspapers.

Readership of the New Zealand Herald is up by 29,000 a day - with the Weekend Herald taking a commanding lead as the country's best read newspaper - in the latest Nielsen national survey.

The added daily readership would virtually fill the new South and East stands of the rebuilt Eden Park.

The Nielsen face-to-face survey of 12,000 New Zealanders puts the Herald average daily readership for those aged 15 and over in the year to June 30 at 602,000.

The Weekend Herald is at 650,000 (up 37,000) - around 116,000 more readers than the nationally-circulating Sunday Star-Times. All six daily editions of the Herald now have higher readership than the Star-Times, whose readership has fallen 51,000 or by 8.7 per cent.

Across the week more than 1 million people will read the Herald at some point. In Auckland, about one in every two people aged 15 and over read the paper.

The Herald won this year's Qantas Award for best daily newspaper. Today's ABC circulation figures, which measure physical sales of the paper to June 30, show the Herald holding even with the last audit in December at just over 170,000.

Herald specialist sections have also recorded strong Nielsen results: canvas magazine is up 8.6 per cent to 453,000, the Thursday Timeout entertainment liftout up 21 per cent to 420,000, Viva up 15 per cent to 330,000 and Travel up 12 per cent to 355,000 (Travel is against March year results).

The Friday Business Herald section is up 20,000 to 405,000 readers, more than five times that of the National Business Review, which was down almost 10 per cent on a year ago.

Fellow APN paper the Herald on Sunday also grew, by 6.5 per cent to 396,000 readers, its highest readership since launch five years ago. It now attracts as many readers in Auckland as its two competitors put together. And in the ABC audit its sales rose by 3.7 per cent to 95,782 papers a week.

Martin Simons, APN's New Zealand media chief executive, said the results were outstanding. Herald readership has only topped 600,000 in two periods in the past 20 years. "This is a remarkable result given the range of news channels consumers have today. It recognises the great job the paper is doing."