Those statistics are from 2014 when Christchurch was still recovering from a massive earthquake and many services were hugely down. You could actually be right on that point about NZH having more readers than the press. Don't know if I'd agree that a 33% higher pageviews/hour is "almost similar" though.

This also doesn't reflect the fact that Fairfax Media nearly has a monopoly on the majority of news sources and regions. NZHerald is owned by a smaller company, NZME, whereas Fairfax Media controls a good 60+% of media in NZ and runs every regional paper, including The Press, Sunday Star Times, Otago Daily Times and many others. So, you could be right on the statistics if you directly compare NZH and The Press but it's a misleading subsection of the whole industry which is largely dominated by Fairfax (and none of their media are reporting this). In total, Fairfax readership by far surpasses NZHerald and its subsidiaries, so the argument over which company is on the headlines is moot to the point that the media is not fairly covering this in NZ. It isn't on RNZ, isn't on Stuff, isn't on Newstalkzb, or any of the most common news agencies other than the independently owned NZH. The vast majority of kiwis definitely don't know about this, if I just say "Uyghur" all I get is blank stares