The New Zealand Herald
The New Zealand Herald is a daily newspaper published in Auckland, New Zealand, owned by New Zealand Media and Entertainment, and considered a newspaper of record for New Zealand.[4]
This article is about the newspaper. For the officer of arms, see New Zealand Herald Extraordinary.
It has the largest newspaper circulation in New Zealand, peaking at over 200,000 copies in 2006, although circulation of the daily Herald had declined to 100,073 copies on average by September 2019.[3]
The Herald's publications include a daily paper; the Weekend Herald, a weekly Saturday paper; and the Herald on Sunday, which has 365,000 readers nationwide.[5] The Herald on Sunday is the most widely read Sunday paper in New Zealand.[5]
The paper's website, nzherald.co.nz, is viewed 2.2 million times a week[5] and was named Voyager Media Awards' News Website of the Year in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.[6] In 2023, the Weekend Herald was awarded Weekly Newspaper of the Year and the publication's mobile application was the News App of the Year.[6]
Its main circulation area is the Auckland region. It is also delivered to much of the North Island, including Northland, Waikato, King Country, Hawke's Bay, Bay of Plenty, Manawatū, and Wellington.[7][8]
Political stance and editorial opinion[edit]
The Herald is traditionally a centre-right newspaper and was given the nickname "Granny Herald" into the 1990s.[10]
The Herald's stance on the Middle East is supportive of Israel, as seen most clearly in its 2003 censorship and dismissal of cartoonist Malcolm Evans following his submission of cartoons critical of Israel.[19]
In 2007, an editorial strongly disapproved of some legislation introduced by the Labour-led government, the Electoral Finance Act, to the point of overtly campaigning against the legislation.[20]
Journalistic mishaps[edit]
Mistaken identity incident[edit]
In July 2014, the Herald published a front-page story about the death of Guy Boyland, a New Zealand-born soldier killed in Gaza. The paper pulled a photograph of the television star Ryan Dunn, killed in 2011, from Boyland's Facebook page, erroneously claiming it was of Boyland. When the Herald's mistake was revealed, the paper issued apologies to Boyland's family, his friends, and the paper's readers.[21] In a 2016 study by Philippa K. Smith and Helen Sissons, the authors said the mistake was caused by "a series of lapses in the newsroom". They concluded that the incident caused damage to the Herald's reputation, which it tried to repair by apologising. The Herald promised to reform its newsroom processes.[22]
Ethics incident[edit]
In July 2015, the New Zealand Press Council ruled that Herald columnist Rachel Glucina had failed to properly represent herself as a journalist when seeking comment from Amanda Bailey on a complaint she had made about Prime Minister John Key repeatedly pulling her hair when he was a customer at the cafe in which she worked. The Herald published Bailey's name, photo, and comments after she had retracted permission for Glucina to do so. The council said there was an "element of subterfuge" in Glucina's actions and that there was not enough public interest to justify her behaviour. In its ruling the council said that "The NZ Herald has fallen sadly short of those standards in this case." The Herald's editor denied the accusations of subterfuge. Glucina subsequently resigned from the newspaper.[23]
COVID-19 disinformation[edit]
In 2020, the New Zealand Herald ran inserts provided by the People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, pushing Chinese state disinformation about COVID-19.[24] The newspaper subsequently deleted the story from its website.[24]
Titles[edit]
Herald on Sunday[edit]
A compact-sized Sunday edition, the Herald on Sunday, was first published on 3 October 2004 under the editorship of Suzanne Chetwin and then, for five years, by Shayne Currie. It won Newspaper of the Year for the calendar years 2007 and 2009 and is New Zealand's most-read Sunday newspaper. In 2010, the Herald on Sunday started a campaign to reduce the legal blood alcohol limit for driving in New Zealand, called the "Two Drinks Max" campaign. The paper set up a campaign Facebook page, a Twitter account, and encouraged readers to sign up to the campaign on its own website.[26] It is currently edited by Alanah Eriksen.[27]
Herald Online website[edit]
The newspaper's online news service, originally called Herald Online, was established in 1998. It was redesigned in late 2006, and again in 2012. The site was named best news website at the 2007 and 2008 Qantas Media Awards, won the "best re-designed website" category at the 2007 New Zealand NetGuide Awards, and was one of seven newspaper sites named an Official Honouree in the 2007 Webby Awards.[28] A paywall was added for "premium content" starting on 29 April 2019.[29]