The West Australian readership up by 26,000 while The Sunday Times attracts 34,000 new readers

The extraordinary continued growth of The West Australian and The Sunday Times has been highlighted in new Roy Morgan figures that show thousands more people are reading the newspapers compared with a year ago.

The net year-on-year readership for The West Australian’s Monday to Friday editions has grown by 26,000 readers to 534,000, while the Saturday newspaper attracted 491,000 readers — an increase of 8000 from last year.

Meanwhile, The Sunday Times’ readership has grown 34,000 readers to 407,000.

The West’s print and online products reach more than 4 million people each month, including eight in 10 West Australians.

That is the highest cross-platform reach among Australia’s major metropolitan mastheads.

In comparison, just over 50 per cent of Victorians read the Herald Sun and less than 40 per cent of NSW residents read The Daily Telegraph across print and online.

The Monday to Saturday print editions of The West and the Sunday Times collectively reach 616,000 people (aged 18 and above) in Perth. To put that into perspective, the city’s top radio station reaches 598,000 people across the week.

More people are also reading our magazines, with Saturday’s PLAY magazine gaining 19,000 new readers over the past year and STM earning 42,000 new readers.

West Australian Newspapers editor-in-chief Anthony De Ceglie said 2023 was going to be an exciting year for readers as his team wheeled out new products.

This included a soon-to-be-launched daily share market online video show called Trading Up, a new Monday night online AFL show called Mad Monday and a new lifestyle video show.

“These readerships results are underpinned, as always, by the strength of our award-winning and brave journalism,” he said.

“We’re constantly trying to improve and refresh our offerings to readers and the continued growth of our readership is because we never rest on our laurels.

“The great news is that we’re just getting started and 2023 will see us take our cross-platform journalism to an even higher level.”

De Ceglie said Sport had undergone a major shake-up during the “off-season” so it would be ready to produce more engaging AFL content than ever before under the leadership of the section’s new editor Jakeb Waddell.