“Stuff, as the most-read news website in New Zealand, has a focus on reaching the widest audience possible, giving Kiwis reliable and fast news coverage. Whereas the newspapers focus on in-depth reporting on issues relevant to a smaller but highly engaged audience.”

The three Masthead Publishing titles all have “very different voices and audiences” and offer something complementary to the bundle. The Post is based in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and has a wider national and political focus. The Press is based in Christchurch and is the voice for the South Island, while The Waikato Times website has a strong regional tone as it comprises a stable of local newspapers.

Johnson said the initial subscriptions launch was “carefully crafted to retain the existing readership and get them excited about the websites”. The three newspapers all gave prominence to information about the digital offer across their first three pages including letters from the editors.

The opportunity was also taken to modernise, including by changing the name of The Dominion Post to The Post with the slogan: “Under no-one’s dominion” as a reference to New Zealand’s past relationship with the UK.

“It also had a double meaning, that The Post now would be obtaining new digital subscribers and no longer hosting their articles online on Stuff – this is pretty empowering for the journalists and editors alike because our digital subscription growth is directly linked to our editorial content,” Johnson said.

According to Nielsen figures for September shared by Stuff, the digital subscription sites have a combined unique audience of just under 750,000 while the Stuff website itself has a unique audience of 2.2 million people. New Zealand has a population of about 5.5 million.

[Read more: How NZ news site Stuff is tackling news avoidance]

Shift from page views to subs as key metric drives in-depth reporting

Overall the Stuff group employs 350 journalists. The biggest strategic change in the Masthead Publishing newsrooms, Johnson said, was the shift in focus from page views to paid-for digital subscriptions.

“We can clearly see from the numbers that big breaking news brings in the page views (which is still important to us) but it’s the analysis, opinion, and exclusives around those news stories that motivate people to subscribe,” she said. “So we are prioritising that style of editorial content more and more.”

She added: “We all know how addictive page views are, and so initially the newsrooms did find it hard to shift to using subscriber acquisition as the new key metric. However, after seeing the uplift in subscriber numbers for their articles and the willingness of readers to pay online, there was a positive shift in the newsrooms.

“The act of paying for high-quality content is a powerful endorsement of what we do. Our journalists can see this is how our sector remains relevant and healthy in the digital age.”

Johnson also described the heritage newspapers as having “something of a start-up vibe when it comes to knowing that editorial lines will bring in the subscriptions”.

Johnson, who arrived at Stuff shortly before the new strategy went live, brought experience from UK subscription businesses The Telegraph and The New Statesman. Asked about the differences between the local news markets in the UK and New Zealand, she said: “New Zealand has a very loyal newspaper audience, although as with the UK,  print is in steady decline. 

“There is a dispersed population and the cost of delivery in NZ is substantial. Coupled with the increased cost of paper, the need to move to digital sooner rather than later is critical.  To help migrate readers from print to digital, current print subscribers automatically get access to the websites. This is to encourage them to use digital products.”

She added: “The New Zealand market is very different market to the UK.  There are only 5.5 million people, therefore, most people tend to have closer personal connections with small towns across the country and an interest in what is happening there. This means local stories resonate with people outside their locality. To leverage this feature, we have incorporated small local paper news as part of the wider subscription. This helps keep our local papers viable. 

“Additionally, as the cost of living in New Zealand goes up, and a newspaper subscription might feel like more of a luxury, if people can no longer afford to pay for the paper we can offer them a digital-only subscription, which can be very appealing.”

Print remains “financially important to us as does delivering a high-quality product to our customers,” Johnson said. “However, we accept that there is an inexorable shift to digital news consumption, hence we want to form digital habits now with these websites.”

As Stuff is a private company it does not share its subscriber numbers or related figures.

But Belinda Lush, director of reader revenue, told Press Gazette that the “launch of our digital subscription products has delivered incremental revenue and audience growth.

“We see the growth of our digital subscriber base as a critical investment in the sustainability of independent journalism in New Zealand.”

Sharing her key lessons for other publishers, Johnson said: “The fundamentals of making any transition like this are to have a well-thought-out strategy, to communicate well with customers and take them with you, and to make sure the staff get and own the strategy.

“Of course, the financials need to be robust and the metrics for success crystal clear. In practice this is of course hard and needs determination, resilience and strong leadership,” she added, citing in particular chief executive Sinead Boucher, who bought Stuff for $1 in management buyout in 2020, and managing director Joanna Norris.

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