Nielsen media research figures released today for the year to March show average issue readership for all five metropolitan dailies across the country - The NZ Herald, The Dominion Post, The Press, Waikato Times and Otago Daily Times - was up 14,000 per day.
The Waikato Times and ODT both recorded big increases of 8000 readers per day (to 105,000 and 108,000 respectively), The Dominion Post was up 5000 to 250,000 and The Press moved up by 1000 to 227,000.
The Herald remains by far the country's biggest newspaper with an average daily readership of 586,000.
Sunday newspapers performed strongly, with the Sunday Star Times up 20,000 to 585,000, the Sunday News up 3000 to 327,000 and the Herald on Sunday stable at 371,000.
When regional newspapers were added, total average daily readership was up slightly on the previous year by 1000 to 1,624,000.
This represents 48.1% of the population aged over 15 years.
"This proves the power of print is undiminished despite the recession and ill informed predictions of the demise of newspapers," Newspaper Publishers' Association chief executive Tim Pankhurst said.
"There is no denying advertising is down and all sectors of the media are feeling that but this is a strong, positive result that will give confidence that newspapers still deliver.
"Once you add online audiences from associated newspaper sites, the reach is bigger than ever." Similar results have been recorded worldwide, with circulations growing 1.3% in 2008.
"Predicting the death of newspapers seems to have reached the level of a new sport," World Association of Newspapers president Gavin O'Reilly said at its conference in Barcelona this week.
He said this doom and gloom had largely gone unanswered and was "the most bizarre case of wilful self-mutilation ever in the annals of industry".
Print media still took 37% of world advertising revenues and newspapers reached 41% more adults than the world wide web.
