Wilson had been a partner with John Williamson in the New Zealander, but left to start a rival daily newspaper as he saw a business opportunity with Auckland's rapidly growing population.

[10] After the New Zealander closed in 1866, The Daily Southern Cross provided competition, particularly after Julius Vogel took a majority shareholding in 1868.

[9] In 1876 the Wilson family and Horton joined in partnership and The New Zealand Herald absorbed The Daily Southern Cross.

[12] In 1892, the New Zealand Herald, Otago Daily Times, and Press agreed to share the costs of a London correspondent and advertising salesman.

[citation needed] In April 2007, APN NZ announced it was outsourcing the bulk of the Herald's copy editing to an Australian-owned company, Pagemasters.

In November 2012, two months after the launch of its new compact format, APN News and Media announced it would be restructuring its workforce, cutting eight senior roles from across the Herald's range of titles.

[25] In July 2014, the Herald published a front-page story about the death of Guy Boyland, a New Zealand-born soldier killed in Gaza.

[29] In a 2016 study by Philippa K. Smith and Helen Sissons, the authors said the mistake was caused by "a series of lapses in the newsroom".

[30] In July 2015, the New Zealand Press Council ruled that Herald columnist Rachel Glucina had failed to properly represent herself as a journalist when seeking comment from Amanda Bailey on a complaint she had made about Prime Minister John Key repeatedly pulling her hair when he was a customer at the cafe in which she worked.

[32] On 7 August 2024, lobby group Hobson's Pledge published a full-page advertisement in The New Zealand Herald calling for the "restoration of the foreshore and seabed to public ownership."

The advertisement drew criticism from Te Pāti Māori, who responded they would be cease engaging with The Herald until the newspaper and its owners NZME issued a public apology and amended their publishing standards.