New editor to take charge of soaring paper

Bryce Johns. Photo / Supplied

The Herald on Sunday will have a new editor in six weeks.

Bryce Johns, who has just finished as editor of the Waikato Times, will start at this paper on July 13.

His arrival comes as the Herald on Sunday posts another year-on-year surge in readership: 378,000 readers are picking up the paper on a Sunday, an increase of 7000 on the previous 12-month period.

The Nielsen Media Survey shows the Herald on Sunday dominates the Auckland market.

In the upper half of the North Island, it has 57,000 more readers than the Sunday Star-Times and 154,000 more readers than the Sunday News.

Those two papers lost 78,000 readers nationwide in the past 12 months.

Johns says the Herald on Sunday's increased readership is a tremendous achievement, and reflects the way the paper's staff listen to what readers want.

The 42-year-old has worked on seven newspapers in the North Island and, under his editorship, the Waikato Times was named best daily newspaper at last year's Qantas Media Awards.

But this will be his first foray into the competitive Sunday market.

"Not many newspapers are growing in this day and age, but I've come off a paper in Hamilton that has grown circulation and readership against the trend," Johns said.

"And I'm moving to one of the few other papers in the country with its figures moving in the right direction - the Herald on Sunday is doing a lot of things right."

Shayne Currie, the Sunday paper's editor for most of the past five years, has moved to the daily New Zealand Herald.