The Herald & Times Group, publisher of The Herald, Sunday Herald, and heraldscotland.com, today celebrates a double success in audience figures.
Firstly, online audience and subscriber growth have continued to grow and The Herald's total paid readership is up year-on-year.
Although January-June 2014 average print circulation has slipped back by 8% year-on-year, online audiences have increased by 49%, resulting in a total audience increase of 39% to 2.27 million each month.
With paid-for subscriptions to heraldscotland.com rising by 135% and mobile app subscriptions increasing by 269% year-on-year to July 2014, The Herald has also enjoyed continuing growth in paid readership across both print and online.
Secondly, the Sunday Herald is the only paper in Scotland to increase readership of its print format in the six months to June 2014, according to ABC figures released today.
The Sunday Herald enjoyed a 1% growth in average weekly sales in Jan-Jun 2014. Internal figures for July and early August 2014 show this rate of growth increasing further, to 13.5% year-on-year for the first two weeks in August, which equates to over 28,000 copies sold.
Sunday Herald editor Richard Walker said the paper's choice to become the first media backer of Scottish independence helped, along with the launch in May of a new glossy magazine.
Herald & Times managing director Tim Blott said: "We place our readers at the heart of our development strategy and will continue to provide news and content through whichever platforms they prefer.
"What is interesting to note is that, despite a tendency by the media to report with alacrity stories of its own demise, we at Herald & Times Group are seeing a significant increase in paid readership overall."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
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