North & South relaunch on ‘hold’, editor confirms

Wednesday, 29 October 2025

The long-awaited return of investigative magazine North & South has been put on indefinite hold, the publication’s editor has confirmed.

It comes just weeks before the printing presses were due to roll on the first edition of the magazine in a year.

In an email to subscribers, editor Sarah Daniell wrote the long-running magazine had “a compelling and powerful lineup of features for November but sadly it was not to be”.

She continued: “The N&S digital and print project has been put on hold”.

Daniell told The Post she couldn’t comment.

North & South’s print publication was halted in November 2024, with expectations it would be relaunched this year.

“On the back of flat advertising sales and increasing pressure from advertisers, we have decided it's time to get serious about the digital offering for North & South,” a statement from the magazine’s publishers, School Road, said at the time.

“There is a lot of equity in the North & South masthead but it is without a digital platform in a digital world.”

In the background, work started to develop a “robust digital presence for the brand”.

A subscriber newsletter was launched in January, which it was hoped would pave the way for a return.

In her statement, Daniell said the magazine’s website had “grown and expanded” into a “rejuvenated digital platform” while preparations were under way for “the ultimate ‘comeback’ - to relaunch the magazine in print”.

Part of that included the digitisation and republication of articles that had been sitting in the magazine’s archive.

But the physical magazine had yet to return.

“We were planning to go to print just a few short weeks from now, in the form of a quarterly magazine for subscribers,” wrote Daniell.

“An ambitious project, especially in this climate, but I, and others, believed North & South could and would provide what it’s always represented and championed - dense, investigative journalism and reportage that is allowed to breathe, along with provocative columnists and essayists to speak to New Zealanders in cities and small towns who are living, working, struggling and triumphing.”

Former North & South editor Virginia Larson, currently at the helm of Air New Zealand’s in-flight magazine Kia Ora, said North & South’s archive represented an excellent historical archive.

“There's a great treasure trove of New Zealand - well-researched and reflected and and commentary that is really valuable,” she told The Post.

“I think it's a loss to our journalistic record of the country … because they were in depth, that kind of in-depth journalism that is harder to resource and do these days.”

Larson said the ongoing success of The Listener, which now exists both in-print and online, suggested there was still “an appetite” for long-form magazine stories.

“I know they say it's an older audience, but I don't know. Perhaps it's a stage of life that you are more interested in some of these subjects, but that does suggest that there is still a need out there.”

North & South first launched in 1986 by Metro Publications. It was owned by the Bauer Media Group from 2012 until it withdrew from New Zealand in 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

It was relaunched a few months later before being sold to independent publishers, and in 2023 to School Road Publishing.

North & South’s delayed return follows news in recent weeks that another long-running publication, Auckland’s Metro Magazine, is undergoing change.

As The Post reported, the magazine has lost its editor and three other full-time staff as part of a shake-up - two were made redundant while the other two resigned immediately after.

It intends to relaunch with guest editors in the near future.