New Zealand Herald confirms compact edition launch date
APN Neww Zealand has confirmed the official launch date for the move to compact format of its flagship title the New Zealand Herald.
The announcement:
The weekday New Zealand Herald will move to a compact format on Monday 10 September 2012, APN New Zealand announced today. The redesign of the nzherald.co.nz website homepage will also go live on this day.
The new-look newspaper will feature new sections, a stronger focus on investigative journalism andtopics of relevance and importance in modern-day New Zealand.
“While much of the focus has been on the compact format and design of the newspaper, we’vebeen equally focused on reviewing and revamping all of our content to ensure it is more relevant, important and topical,” said New Zealand Herald editor Shayne Currie.
“We will be delivering great, new-form journalism through innovative and world-leading design, and we will link more closely to the NZH website, tablet and mobileapps.”
The new-look Monday-to-Friday newspaper will have at least three sections each day – a “main book” of news, world, opinion and sport; a stapled business lift-out and a daily lifestyle or special interest magazine, including a new magazine on Monday (to be announced shortly); Travel on Tuesday; Viva and Driven on Wednesday; TimeOut on Thursday and SuperSport and The Business on Friday.
“While we’ll be compact in size, we will not be reducing our editorial space – in fact, ournews section will be bigger than ever,” said Currie.
“We’re expanding the specialist topics our reporters are covering – readers can expect to see a lot more news content that’s relevant to modern-day New Zealand including science and technology, environment, social and property issues.”
Currie said the Herald’s stable of columnists would expand, with new names to be announced in coming weeks. Popular columns such as Sideswipe,The Diary and 12 Questions will be part of a bigger, daily entertainment section.”It’s an incredibly exciting time for the Herald – both for the newspaper and the digital platforms. We can’t wait to share the changes.”
There has been overwhelming support for the new content and design initiatives from readerfocus groups and advertiser briefing sessions, and final tweaks are being made during the last stages of customer testing ahead of the September 10 launch.
The award-winning Weekend Herald will remain as a larger broadsheet as that format is more suited to a leisurely read at the weekend.
Source: press release
