Danny and Ian Kennedy
A story about former Waipā posties Danny and Ian Kennedy abandoning their breach‑of‑contract damages claim against NZ Post was the top read online article on the Te Awamutu News website last year.
Danny and Ian Kennedy
Firefighters tackling an Ōhaupō blaze in February came in second in a year where website visits were up 56 per cent – edging past sister publication Cambridge News for the first time.
The home page was the most‑visited section, followed by the News in Brief and the e‑Editions. Three of the year’s top 10 stories appeared exclusively online, underscoring the website’s role as an essential companion to the weekly print edition.
Editor Roy Pilott said readers’ engagement across both platforms showed the value of offering multiple ways to access local news.
“Both serve the purpose of delivering news and information. While the newspaper offers a more immersive reading experience, our online platform allows us to break stories or expand on print coverage between publication days. Clearly our readers value that choice,” he said.
The top 10 Te Awamutu News stories in order were:
Case dropped
Firefighters deal to Ōhaupō blaze
- Principal in the clear
- Transfer station to close
- News in brief 16 June
- Claims denied
- New rules for kiwifruit
- O’Regan does it again
- Highway closure a mixed bag
- Local elections preliminary results.
Cambridge News’ top story was economics columnist Peter Nicholl’s May column – The fall of the US dollar, narrowly surpassing interest in preliminary local body election results.
Visits to the Cambridge site were up 31 per cent on 2024 driven in large part by the global reach of Nicholl’s column. Remarkably, most of the column’s readership came from the United States, where readers seized on Nicholl’s critique of President Donald Trump’s “shambolic policy‑making”.
A former governor of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina and deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Nicholl may now be retired in Cambridge, but his analysis clearly still resonates on the world stage.
Waikato Business News, Good Local Media’s monthly publication, posted the biggest digital growth – a 73 per cent increase in website visits. Its top story focused on a new industrial development in Putāruru, closely followed by news of an airport hub project.
