The Age remains Victoria’s most-read masthead

The Age has held its position as Victoria’s most-read masthead, according to new figures released by Roy Morgan.

The masthead has cross-platform readership of more than 4.6 million, based on the measure of monthly average audience, meaning more than one in five Australian readers choose The Age. It has 650,000 more readers than its main competitor, The Herald Sun.

The Age’s print edition on Monday to Friday has a readership of 240,000, and the Saturday print edition is read by 389,000 Australians.

Executive editor Luke McIlveen said The Age, which celebrates its 170th birthday this year, was unquestionably Victoria’s premier news brand.

“It has exposed the corruption at the heart of the CFMEU and the union’s unseemly ties to state and federal Labor,” McIlveen said.

“Led by The Age’s chief investigative reporter, Nick McKenzie, the Building Bad series began on the streets of Melbourne but quickly spread to Canberra and every CFMEU branch in the country.

“This was a truly great piece of journalism – and our loyal readers at The Age know other newspapers gave up on this standard of investigative reporting a long time ago.”

In total, the mastheads under Nine Publishing – The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian Financial Review, WA Today and Brisbane Times – reach an audience of more than 16 million.

The country’s most-read masthead is The Sydney Morning Herald, with a readership of 7.2 million, coming ahead of competitors The Australian and Daily Telegraph at less than 4.1 million each. The Australian Financial Review has a readership of more than 3.5 million.

Readership of Good Food, published across the Herald and The Age, increased by 16 per cent in the last quarter to 1.6 million, while Traveller’s readership grew by 12 per cent to nearly 1.3 million.

Good Weekend is read by 690,000 people on average per issue. Sunday Life has a readership of 356,000 and Domain has attracted 455,000.

More broadly, Roy Morgan’s data shows 21.7 million Australians are reading the news.

ThinkNewsBrands chief executive Vanessa Lyons said news readers are a highly engaged and attentive audience.

“Audiences aren’t scrolling past news. They’re accessing multiple news brands and content categories every month with repeated interactions,” she said. “Continuing to seek out news in a cost-of-living crisis really proves the importance Australians place on it.”

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