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Chronicle Reporter
THE Chronicle is Zimbabwe’s fastest growing daily newspaper, new figures show. Your favourite newspaper now enjoys a 17 percent market share of the national reading public, up from 13 percent last year, according to the 2015 Zimbabwe All Media Products Survey (ZAMPS). The survey shows The Chronicle, which is published by Zimbabwe Newspapers (Zimpapers), gained readers both in high and low density suburbs in urban centres.

In the high densities, your daily read was up by four percentage points from 12 percent to 16 percent while in the low density suburbs the jump was a remarkable six percentage points from 15 to 21 percent. Other Zimpapers publications also registered gains, with The Herald staying well ahead as the country’s most read paper with 41 percent, up from 39 last year. H-Metro was up from 23 to 24 percent.

The new figures prove that The Chronicle, which is published out of Bulawayo, is closing in on the competition with NewsDay (25 percent) and The Daily News (25 percent) now within sight.

Zimpapers also leads in the weekly papers, with The Sunday Mail enjoying a 38 percent market share, followed by B-Metro with 14 percent, Manica Post with 10 percent, Kwayedza with nine percent and Sunday News with six percent.

Our rivals all suffered reversals, with The Standard shedding readers from seven percent to six, the Financial Gazette from five to four percent, The Zimbabwe Independent from four to three percent while The Daily News on Sunday also declined by a percentage point from four to three percent.

Mduduzi Mathuthu, The Chronicle editor, said it was “encouraging to see that our journalism resonates with the reading public”. “The kind of growth that these telling numbers show is quite phenomenal and for that we have our readers and advertisers to thank for their loyalty during these very difficult economic times,” he said.

“We’ve a hardworking team of journalists pushing themselves to the limit everyday and our challenge is to do even better by constantly improving our print and online products while keeping our fingers on the pulse of the nation.”

The ZAMPS survey, conducted last month, also shows that The Chronicle has the best sports and regional news coverage of any national newspaper. ZAMPS is produced by the Zimbabwe Advertising Research Foundation (ZARF) which was established in 1997 to commission market research on behalf of advertisers, the media, publishers, advertising agencies and public relations firms.