Auckland-based business publication The Independent is to shut up shop after almost 20 years, with Fairfax announcing a major restructure of its business journalism.

The media company revealed today that it would refocus on its Businessday brands, with The Independent due to close down next month.

Eight journalists now working for the newspaper will be transferred to the website operations in the move.

The paper was first published in 1992 and Fiona Rotherham - its final editor – will manage the Businessday website.

Stuff is boasting that not only are its homepage numbers bigger than the Herald’s, the entire site is now more popular too.

Fairfax Media group head of digital Stephen Smith said that according to Neilson Stuff garnered 1,531,318 domestic unique web browsers during July, compared to the Herald’s 1,520,176, the first time Stuff has been in front since November 2007.

The Auckland-based New Zealand Herald's home page has been knocked from its perch as the No 1 news page in the country by the Wellington-focused Stuff news website.

The stuff.co.nz home page boasted 126,956 average daily unique browsers for the month of July, compared with 120,980 for the nzherald.co.nz homepage, according to Nielson market intelligence.

Over the past 12 months the Stuff homepage had been consistently about 2000 viewers behind the Herald.

Fairfax has appointed a surprise new chief executive of New Zealand operations following an executive clean out in recent months.

Allen Williams, currently the publisher of its community and regional newspapers in Illawarra & Hunter will take over the New Zealand branch of the company, replacing Joan Withers who announced her intentions to leave last week.

Her departure came after Fairfax chief executive David Kirk resigned, or as insiders claim was pushed out the door. His departure was swiftly followed by chief financial officer Sankar Narayan.