We’re having a birthday – but it’s you getting the present
To mark the second birthday of our digital subscription service, we’re offering a free four-week trial for potential new members.
Two years ago, NZME took a bold step no major Kiwi news organisation had taken before: it asked readers to pay to access its best journalism online. Today, as we celebrate the second anniversary of Premium, our digital subscription service has grown beyond expectations – and is continuing to expand rapidly, auguring an exciting future for New Zealand’s leading news publisher.
More than 110,000 people are now paying to read smart, insightful reporting and commentary on the most important national, business and political issues, along with a selection of articles from leading international publications. More than 60,000 of them are paying for digitalonly Premium access.
This weekend, to mark Premium’s second birthday, we’re offering potential new subscribers a free fourweek trial. Visit nzherald.co.nz/subscribe for details. The offer expires at 11.59pm on Saturday.
Five, six, or seven-day subscribers to the Advocate’s print editions, are entitled to full digital access; they just have to go to nzherald.co.nz/activate to activate their subscriptions.
Kiwis are turning to Premium now as they have to the Advocate for more than 150 years – to help them make sense of uncertain times.
Since Premium launched, New Zealand has been through two extremely turbulent years, and our journalists rose to the challenge, bringing our members up-to-the-minute news, astute analysis, and deep-dive investigations about the stories that really matter – including the rollout of the Covid vaccines, the local body and general elections and a deepdive into our health system.
Premium membership has more than doubled from a year ago, providing a vital new source of support for high-quality journalism at a time when New Zealand’s news media faces difficult headwinds.
Public interest journalism is difficult and expensive to produce; it requires newsrooms with financial and legal resources, skilled staff, and significant reach. But the ability of publishers to fund this crucial work has been severely curtailed by unprecedented technological and economic disruption in the news business.
When NZME launched Premium in 2019, it flew in the face of critics who doubted that a digital subscriber service of this scale could be established in the New Zealand market.
Two years on, the decision has been vindicated, proving that New Zealanders do indeed recognise the value of quality journalism.
We’ve been humbled by the support from our subscribers. It comes at a time when journalism is in more demand than ever. Our website, nzherald.co.nz, is the number one news website in New Zealand, reaching 1.95 million last month.
Premium subscribers get access to hundreds of articles every week on news, sport, business, politics, lifestyle and entertainment. They also get selected articles from global publishers including the Financial Times and New York Times.
Our ambitions for Premium don’t stop here. We’re investing in quality journalism, including recently launching a dedicated investigations team with several of the country’s most formidable reporters. We’ll soon roll out more innovations to better inform and serve our subscribers, and to bring our journalism to a new generation of readers, viewers and listeners.
With your support, we will continue to provide news Kiwis can trust for another 150 years.