[6] The paper has a focus on providing an entertaining Sunday read with a mixture of news, features and celebrity gossip.
Regular contributors for the Sunday Star-Times include Rosemary McLeod, Michael Laws, and Finlay MacDonald.
Steve Braunias was a regular columnist for the Sunday magazine part of the newspaper, but was sacked in early 2011 for exchanging abusive emails with a Gisborne police prosecutor named Claire Stewart.
[needs update] In 2004 the paper published a front-page story claiming that the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service was spying on members of the newly formed Māori Party.
A government inquiry led by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security later rejected these claims in April 2005, and the paper had to publish a front page apology to its readers when a government investigation found the claims to be unsubstantiated.