The Age has held its position as Victoria’s most-read masthead, according to new figures released by Roy Morgan.

The masthead has cross-platform readership of more than 4.6 million, based on the measure of monthly average audience, meaning more than one in five Australian readers choose The Age. It has 650,000 more readers than its main competitor, The Herald Sun.

The Age’s print edition on Monday to Friday has a readership of 240,000, and the Saturday print edition is read by 389,000 Australians.

Executive editor Luke McIlveen said The Age, which celebrates its 170th birthday this year, was unquestionably Victoria’s premier news brand.

“It has exposed the corruption at the heart of the CFMEU and the union’s unseemly ties to state and federal Labor,” McIlveen said.

“Led by The Age’s chief investigative reporter, Nick McKenzie, the Building Bad series began on the streets of Melbourne but quickly spread to Canberra and every CFMEU branch in the country.

“This was a truly great piece of journalism – and our loyal readers at The Age know other newspapers gave up on this standard of investigative reporting a long time ago.”

In total, the mastheads under Nine Publishing – The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian Financial Review, WA Today and Brisbane Times – reach an audience of more than 16 million.

The country’s most-read masthead is The Sydney Morning Herald, with a readership of 7.2 million, coming ahead of competitors The Australian and Daily Telegraph at less than 4.1 million each. The Australian Financial Review has a readership of more than 3.5 million.