Fairfax to launch new weekly magazine

9 July 2008

Fairfax to launch new weekly magazine

Fairfax Media is launching a new high quality magazine to be distributed with every weekend edition of its three largest daily newspapers, The Dominion Post, The Press and The Waikato Times.

The new magazine will be launched in September and will be distributed weekly with approximately 240,000 newspapers. It will be produced by Fairfax Magazines and share the same high-quality production values as sister magazines such as Sunday, NZ House & Garden, Cuisine and NZ Life & Leisure.

Rodger Shepherd, Fairfax Media's group head of publishing says the tremendous success of Sunday magazine and the growing demand from readers and advertisers for high quality newspaper inserted magazines, has led to the decision to launch this new title.

"Fairfax Media also believes the time is right to give the readers of our largest daily newspapers additional value and a cost effective alternative with what we believe will be New Zealand's largest circulating weekly magazine," he says.

The move will increase the strength of Fairfax in the weekly magazine market, by adding a further title to sit alongside Sunday magazine and TV Guide. The latest Nielsen National Readership Survey, covering April 07 to March 08, shows that Sunday, distributed with the Sunday Star-Times, is read by 541,000 people every week. When combined with TV Guide these titles reach nearly 1.2 million readers 10+ every week.

Paul Thompson, Fairfax Media's group executive editor, says the new magazine will be a flagship for Fairfax's best journalists and their work.

"Weekend newspaper readers tell us they want to be challenged and stimulated. They are deep thinkers who want to be informed about topical issues. They have an insatiable appetite for serious news and are not afraid of lengthy stories that take them to the heart of a big issue," he says.

"The new weekend magazine will give readers compelling feature stories on a variety of topical subjects tapping into the feature writing talent throughout the Fairfax network. It will also offer a well-balanced mix of the 'chill out' aspects of a weekend read - the essentials of food, wine, fashion, beauty, home design and gardening, rounded off with the latest good reads."

Sandra King, Fairfax Media's group sales and marketing manager says the new title will have a guaranteed readership of 350,000+ and will have scope to attract much wider stand alone readership.

"Sunday's example has shown that readership for weekend magazines extends beyond the host publication as the magazine develops its own unique stand alone connection and readership base."

Source: National Readership Survey: April 2007- March 2008

ENDS

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