KEY POINTS:
Readership of the print editions of the New Zealand Herald and its sister title the Herald on Sunday has surged in the past year.
The average daily readership of the Herald rose 17,000 to 585,000 and the Sunday was up 19,000 readers last year from 2006 to hit 345,000.
The Weekend Herald remains the best-read paper in the country, with 624,000 readers each Saturday, and a total of four daily issues of the Herald each week are better read than the next biggest, national, paper.
The increases in the Nielsen readership survey, which interviews 12,000 people nationwide, follow gains of 10,000 and 21,000 in year on year readership for the Herald in the past two 12-month periods.
The Herald is read by just over a million people at some stage over each week.
Last year, the paper introduced the Metro news section, Green Pages, the Friday business liftout and expanded canvas on Saturdays. The Herald also led coverage of high-profile news including the death of Folole Muliaga, the police rape trials, the Pumpkin abandonment and murder case and the controversial Electoral Finance Bill.
In the Sunday market, the Herald on Sunday's strong showing has seen it overtake the Sunday News to claim second position nationally. In the northern North Island and Auckland the Herald on Sunday is clearly the best read paper. The Fairfax titles, the Sunday Star-Times saw readership drop year-on-year by 17,000 and Sunday News by 42,000.
The Dominion Post in Wellington was down 9000 to 244,000, the Press, Christchurch, up 10,000 to 233,000 and the Otago Daily Times was down 4000 to 107,000 average daily readers.
In the business press, the National Business Review grew by 12,000 readers to top the 100,000 mark after falling beneath that threshold and the Independent Financial Review fell 5000 to just 31,000 readers.
Standout results for magazines included the Listener increasing readership by 11,000 to 295,000, Metro dropping by 25,000 to 127,000 and falls among women's titles, with the Woman's Weekly down 63,000 to 891,000 readers but holding premier spot in that market, and the Woman's Day off 43,000 to 856,000.
