Could RNZ soon become our second largest news website?
Friday, 28 November 2025
ANALYSIS: The last big media ratings war was fought out on 6pm television screens between TVNZ and TV3 - but these days, the battle lines are drawn on the internet.
The contest to control clicks is heating up, with the latest round of ratings showing that Radio New Zealand (RNZ) is continuing its upward trajectory and threatening to overtake the New Zealand Herald as the second largest news website in the country - based on one widely-used metric at least.
That’s significant because the Herald and Stuff have consistently been the top two players and well ahead of the pack.
While it’s hard to pinpoint what has caused RNZ’s rise, it has coincided with a general drop in ratings for the Herald that sources suggest may, in part, come from a reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) curation for the site’s homepage.
Read more:
The big names who may be in the running to co-host Morning Report
What 1News’ succession plan says about the bulletin’s future
It’s also understood bonuses are being paid to Herald reporters in some editorial teams if they manage to reach a certain level of engagement - including clicks - which one former staffer said had “changed the dynamic of news gathering”.
On the flipside, an ex-RNZ staffer believed the public broadcaster had been making a consistent effort to generate more “clickable” content and had also benefitted from the demise of Newshub in 2024.
There’s also industry suspicion from some quarters that RNZ’s monthly numbers, though impressive, may not tell the full story given its daily readership is significantly lower than its main rivals. It suggests readers aren’t sticking around for long, or perhaps arriving direct at individual pieces of content from social media - so-called ‘casuals’.
Let’s start with the monthly numbers, a key metric often touted by individual media outlets - The Post included - as a sign of success.
According to the latest Nielsen ratings, which capture the October audience, Stuff.co.nz remained the largest news website with a unique monthly audience of 2.23 million, though this was down on the month before. The Herald was in second, with 1.96m, and RNZ.co.nz in third with 1.698 million.
1News.co.nz, which was nearly closed in a 2024 restructure, had a monthly audience in October of just over 800,000.
Though the Herald was up by about 100,000 readers in the latest survey compared with RNZ’s increase of 30,000, the overall trend shows just how much the national broadcaster has managed to boost its online readership.
In October 2024, RNZ reported a monthly audience of about 1.42 million, while in October 2023 it was below one million.
The Herald has fallen from a peak of more than 2 million, though it has improved from a mid-year dip below 1.8m.
Stuff described itself in October as “by far the country’s largest digital news site”, though its audience was also down about 90,000 on the same time a year ago.
The sale of 50% of its business to Trade Me earlier this year will have provided a healthy financial boost, and rumours have started to circulate that more of the business could also be sold. A Stuff spokesperson said: 'We never comment on market speculation.'
Stuff’s masthead sites (including The Post) have meanwhile made a concerted effort to boost national content in an effort to break away from the perception of being regional newspapers.
Media commentator Gavin Ellis, a former Herald editor, wrote on his Knightly Views blog of The Post that it had “the digital capacity to further erode the Herald’s readership”.
However, RNZ’s surge in readers is of particular note given the website was once primarily a home for accessing the broadcaster’s radio content and was tilted heavily towards hard news. That’s not always the case anymore, as Stuff’s Lloyd Burr examined last year in a piece questioning the outlet’s “mission creep”.
One former staff member believed conscious decisions had been made to introduce more “clickable” content on RNZ, citing the recent introduction of a dedicated lifestyle brand distinct with its own font and page layout.
The arrival of former Stuff boss Mark Stevens also may have allowed for a “more broad news sensibility”, they told The Post.
Since Stevens joined the business, a steady flow of Stuff reporters - including most recently, investigative reporter Edward Gay, hired as their new Auckland bureau chief - have followed him down the road.
“And the other factor is, I think that it clearly was the winner from Newshub shutting down,” said the former RNZ staffer.
“It seems like a lot of that audience did shift over to RNZ, and it kind of came out on top as the default news replacement service.”
The daily numbers also tell a different story, suggesting that while the organisation is good at getting readers through the door - including from places like Facebook - it doesn’t manage to keep them around for very long.
On the day fugitive Tom Phillips was shot, for example, Stuff had the largest number of page views, followed by the Herald with, notably, 1News.co.nz in third position.
On a randomly selected day of this month, RNZ was in third place but with a significant, multi-million ‘view’ gulf between it and the Herald.
RNZ was closer to the Otago Daily Times or, indeed, The Post than it was the Herald.
Taken across the whole month of October, the number of actual page views again showed RNZ significantly trailing the two leaders, Stuff and the Herald, this time by more than 100 million.
Ellis theorised that a large proportion of RNZ’s digital audience may still be visiting the site for radio content, such as on demand interviews or streaming audio from the network’s shows.
“I think that it does indicate that more and more audiences are moving away from live participation to listening or looking at their own convenience, rather than when it might be initially broadcast,” he told The Post.
Ellis wasn’t convinced that RNZ’s rise in the ratings could be put down to a boost in its editorial content.
“People are now treating broadcast radio a little bit more like they treat their online podcasts that they can access that material when they want it, rather than having to listen to it live. So there could well be an element of that in it as well,” he said.
RNZ’s digital executive editor, Rhonwyn Newson, celebrated the recent audience result on LinkedIn and called it “fantastic news”.
“Another month and another new record for RNZ's online audience,” she wrote.
But while RNZ’s emphasis on easy reading entertainment content could contribute to some of its surge, as Ellis noted, they’re competing in a very crowded market.
As one former Herald staff member put it: “They [the Herald]… significantly reduced headcount in the last restructure, prioritising growth in [video service] HeraldNOW while letting quite a few senior reporters leave. The result is a very crime and lifestyle-heavy story count.”
Publicly, RNZ has dedicated most of its attention in recent months to addressing its broadcast offering. While RNZ’s digital audience has risen, its listenership has plummeted.
A damning report by former news boss Richard Sutherland took aim at the station’s on-air talent and Wellington focus, believing “that RNZ regards live listening as a sunset activity, rather than a growth opportunity”.
The network’s new - and notably first - chief audio officer Pip Keane, brought in to turn that perception around, declined an interview with The Post, though a spokesperson said she would likely speak once the network had confirmed personnel changes such as a new host for Morning Report. It’s understood interviews for that high-profile post are under way and an appointment could be made this side of Christmas.
The former RNZ staff member said that website growth had been a “long term goal” inside the organisation, and that the company didn’t want to be “left behind” in the digital age.
“There's competitiveness inside that organisation, and I … can't remember a time when they didn't care about the website,” they said.
While the Herald’s numbers rose in the latest monthly report, they remain lower than its former highs above two million. It’s down by about 162,000 readers compared with October 2024.
The former Herald reporter said that there had been “concerns” the dropoff in readers coincided with the rollout of AI curation, but that it was never definitively linked.
“AI search engines were having a more damaging effect (ie by reducing click-throughs from Google) but this likely affects all websites equally,” they said.
About four homepage stories are hand-selected, often premium articles.
“If your story wasn't in those slots and the robot didn't pick them up you had to beg to have it on the homepage,” said the ex-employee.
Another staffer described having to “pitch” to have their work appear on the site’s homepage, but didn’t believe this was unusual given the vast amount of content being produced.
Former Herald editor Tim Murphy, now editor of Newsroom, wrote in July that regular readers might have “noticed oddities, including stories lingering in spaces high up on the site, certain themes securing prominence almost irrespective of the news agenda, local yokel articles from NZME papers, and a surfeit of regional crime, court and catastrophe”.
Ellis said there was something missing from AI curation - human sensibilities.
'There's an unseen element, and that unseen element is what touches people. It's the, if you like, humanity in news values. How do you put humanity into a machine? You can't. I think that that's the difference, that algorithms are just [a] formula, they are equations.'
It’s also understood that the Herald now offers a bonus scheme - of $250 a month - for certain teams based on results across metrics including clicks, premium subscriptions, video and engagement.
It’s been suggested this may lead to an increase in clickable content, especially towards the end of the month, while the former employee said it “changed the dynamic of news gathering” and created competitiveness between teams.
Ellis said that bonuses weren’t unheard of in newsrooms and that there was “nothing wrong” with incentivising journalists to do a good job.
“Journalists have always received bonuses. I mean, I got bonuses for stories that I wrote and I was and I was really chuffed to get it, because they were a form of recognition.”
Mark Stevens, RNZ’s chief news officer, told The Post in a statement that the organisation had experienced two consecutive record months on its website - and doubled its audience from two years ago.
“RNZ believes the breadth and depth of our charter-driven content is responsible for the growth. This includes high quality interviews from RNZ National and RNZ Concert that are reaching new audiences through rnz.co.nz,” he said.
“Our content is compelling and accessible and our strength in how we cover major news events is also contributing to the growth.”
A spokesperson for NZME did not address questions around the use of AI, bonuses and RNZ’s increase in performance, but said that “our journalists, along with the rest of the company, have clear objectives around quality and performance”.
“We continue to be pleased with the size of the NZ Herald’s website audience as our commitment remains to balance our content to serve a free audience – as well as Premium subscriber-only content.”
Stuff said it used AI tools across “most workstreams”, but always with human oversight.
“Financial bonuses are not paid for clicks.'