The Sydney Morning Herald still the country’s largest masthead

The Sydney Morning Herald has held its lead as the country’s most-read masthead, attracting more than 8.1 million average monthly readers across digital and print over the past 12 months.

Roy Morgan figures released on Monday show the Herald remains the go-to destination for readers despite a decrease in the total number of people consuming news as audiences normalised post-COVID-19 and readers became concerned about the cost of living.

The average print readership was 1.9 million readers across an average four-week period. The Herald’s Monday to Friday print edition grew 14 per cent year-on-year to 402,000, and increased 4 per cent compared to the last quarter. The Sun-Herald print edition is read by 417,000 people every Sunday.

The Herald is more than double the size of its Sydney-based competitor, Rupert Murdoch’s Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph, which had an average readership of 4 million in the same period.

The Herald’s Good Weekend continues to be Saturday’s most-read magazine insert, attracting an average issue print readership of 722,000. Other titles such as Good Food and Traveller had audiences of 1.5 million and 1.6 million respectively.

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The combined figure of 8.1 million makes the Herald the largest publication in the country, ahead of The Australian, which had an average readership of 4.3 million, down 13 per cent compared to the same time the previous year.

Herald editor Bevan Shields said the newsroom had innovative and exciting projects to bring in new readers.

“Against a backdrop of a cost of living crisis and a touch of news fatigue affecting all publishers, The Sydney Morning Herald has more than held its own,” he said. “These figures again demonstrate the quality of the Herald’s journalism and the special role we have in people’s daily lives.”