Trisha Shetty (Editor)

Stuff.co.nz

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Type of site
  
News

Owner
  
Fairfax New Zealand

Website
  
www.stuff.co.nz

Available in
  
English

Created by
  
Independent Newspapers

Stuff.co.nz

Alexa rank
  
3,279. In New Zealand: 6 (December 2016)

Stuff.co.nz is a New Zealand news website published by Fairfax Digital, a division of Fairfax New Zealand Ltd, a subsidiary of Australian company Fairfax Media Ltd. Stuff hosts the websites for Fairfax's New Zealand newspapers, including the country's second and third highest circulation daily newspapers, The Dominion Post and The Press, and the highest circulation weekly, The Sunday Star-Times. It is also a web portal to other Fairfax websites. As of June 2012, the website had an Alexa rank in New Zealand of 8; the site's main competitor, The New Zealand Herald website, had a rank of 9. The site statistics for April 2012 were 4.9 million unique browsers, and 147.5 million page views.

History

The former New Zealand media company Independent Newspapers Ltd (INL), owned by News Corp Australia, launched Stuff on 27 June 2000 at a cybercafe in Auckland, after announcing its intention to go online more than a year earlier. The development of Stuff was supported and governed by, the INL Board, Mike Robson, INL CEO, and Don Higgins, Corporate Development Manager. Mark Wierzbicki, INL Internet Business Manager, lead development and ongoing management of the Stuff site and team. Advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi conceived the name "Stuff", and INL had to buy the domain name from a cyber squatter. In its first month, the site had 120,000 unique visitors. At the time, Mark Wierzbicki, described the name as a copywriter's dream, although he conceded that "it's not without risk, especially if we stuff up." The start up website was built by a group of tech companies in Wellington led by project managers Bill Alp and Will Everitt and used a software platform from News Corp Australia's news.com.au.

On 30 June 2003, INL sold its publishing assets including The Dominion Post, The Press, and the Stuff website to Fairfax Media.

Fairfax upgraded the website in December 2006, and again on 4 March 2009, adding the ability for visitors to personalise the homepage. The first mobile phone news service from Stuff began in 2003, in a partnership with Vodafone New Zealand. On 21 April 2009, Stuff launched a dedicated mobile site, m.stuff.co.nz.

For larger news events, the site usually creates a dedicated section, such as for the Bain family murders retrial and the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake. During the trial of Clayton Weatherston, press.co.nz, a subsidiary section on Stuff accidentally ran the headline "Guilty of Murder" the day before the jury delivered the verdict. The article was quickly withdrawn, and Fairfax executive editor Paul Thompson said it was a mistake "we take very seriously."

The site has won numerous awards including the Newspaper Publishers' Association awards "Best News Website" for 2010 and 2011.

The earliest articles still available on Stuff are from around August 2007.

On 17 April 2013, to celebrate the passing of same-sex marriage in New Zealand, the colour of the Stuff logo was changed from black to the colours associated with the pride flag. The editor of Stuff at the time, Mark Stevens, openly declared his support in August 2012.

References

Stuff.co.nz Wikipedia