September 21, 2025 • 21 mins
Over the past decade, New Zealand has seen dozens of community newspapers shut down, newsroom roles cut, and programmes taken off air.
A new discussion paper by former NZ Herald editor-in-chief Gavin Ellis warns that these changes are creating “news deserts” — areas where communities have little to no access to local reporting. The report highlights the Far North, Taupō, South Taranaki and Central Hawke’s Bay as regions already showing signs of reduced coverage, while parts of Auckland and Wellington are also affected.
The paper argues that without intervention, the impacts will become more visible during upcoming elections, with reduced scrutiny of local government and fewer reliable sources of information for voters.
So how widespread is the problem, and what are the possible solutions? Today, NZ Herald editor-at-large Shayne Currie joins me to discuss what the rise of news deserts could mean for New Zealand.
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You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
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Producer: Jane Yee
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just a quick note before we start the show. In
an episode of The Front Page published on Thursday, Senior
Herald writer Simon Wilson said that the Character Coalition believed
apartment living should be further out from the central city
than Mount Roskill. This was incorrect. The coalition tells us
it supports apartment living in the central city and in
(00:21):
areas appropriately located in inner city suburbs and near railway stations. Kyoda,
I'm Richard Martin in for Chelsea Daniels and this is
the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New
Zealand Herald. Over the past decade, New Zealand has seen
(00:44):
dozens of community newspapers shut down, newsroom rolls cut and
programs taken off the air. A new discussion paper by
former Enzied Herald editor in chief Gavin Alice warns that
these changes are creating news deserts, is where communities have
little to no access to local reporting. The report highlights
(01:05):
the Far North topor South Tartanaki and Central Hawks Bay
as regions already showing signs of reduced coverage, while parts
of Auckland and Wellington are also being affected. The paper
argues that without intervention. The impacts will become more visible
during upcoming elections with reduced scrutiny of local government and
(01:25):
fewer reliable sources of information for voters. So how widespread
is the problem and what are the possible solutions? Today
in ZID Herald editor at Large Shane Curry joins me
to discuss what the rise of news deserts could mean
for New Zealand. All right, so first off, Shane, can
(01:47):
you explain the concept of a news desert to me?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I can. The news desert was first coined in the
US actually about eleven thirteen years ago, and it's basically
an area could be graphic area or an area population
where critical information isn't reaching the people. So it might
be what the local council is up to, critical decisions
(02:11):
that are being made on behalf of a community that
the community is simply not hearing about because there is
a lack of a media platform, whether that's a traditional
community newspaper or a radio television network in the case
of the States, you know, with the network system that
they have over there. So it's really that inability for
(02:32):
a community to discuss information to know what's going on.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
And so do you think New Zealand has these news
deserts or sort in the report mentions that we might
be only ankled deep in the sand.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It's coming that Gavin Alys has completed a very extensive
report and he has looked at geographic regions and he's
pinpointed a couple in particular, the far North areas actually
of Wellington and Auckland. And if you're call that just recently,
Stuff is closed seven of its community titles in Auckland.
I mean, Auckland's a massive city, right, it's really a
(03:08):
combination of lots of different cities or small towns if
you like, as a lot of people have said in
the past, and so a lot of those areas within
Auckland have lost their community paper. Now there's a big
debate as to whether those community papers were serving a purpose.
Hence why the argument was that they lost a lot
of advertising revenue, readership dropped and Stuff had no choice
(03:31):
but to kind of close them.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, because there's talk of like the zombie or ghost newspapers,
and so that might have been sort of what some
of those were before they were shut down.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
That's right, And look, Kevin Allis points particularly to STUFF
and NZME which publishes The New Zealand Herald, that they've
both closed around forty titles in recent years, forty community titles. Now,
what's happened is that big Corporate's right, they're always needing
to make a profit. They looking at their cost lines
(04:01):
all the time. I've been involved myself around the exec
table looking at cost lines. The model that was introduced
for a lot of these community papers in order to
reduce costs was that they would share some pages of
the similar content. Fine in theory, great in theory, and
it does work where it has an impact, though, as
if a story is irrelevant to the community that it's serving,
(04:24):
so great if it's say puzzles, or if you have
a general weather map for the areas covered. But if
you're then getting into stories which are from completely different regions,
then of course the reader is going to say, well,
this doesn't impact me at all. And in fact Rob Drin,
who runs the Flags newspaper in Devenport, which is a
(04:45):
very successful community newspaper, he actually studied the North Shore Times,
the Stuff community paper for several months and found for
a long period there was hardly any local faces in
the paper.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Towards the end, yes, so I guess zombie newspaper. It's
just hobbling together. So there's no actual original part of
it left.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Well, there's a little bit, there's not a lot, though
it's a very small percentage of the overall package. Of course,
these community papers also have to rely on a decent
share of advertising, and so the successful ones continue to
have a more than fifty percent ratio of advertisements to
editorial content, and so you really do have to make
the most of that those editorial pages that are left
(05:29):
to cover. But yeah, the zombie paper is essentially one
where that editorial content is possibly stories from other areas
of the region or the country and are not directly
relevant to that audience.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
So for some of those areas highlighted, the fun No
Top or South Tananaky, Central Hawk's Baywood, those are some
of the ones highlighted as being uncovered already. So in
those areas where they're looking at potentially becoming a news
desert or you know, only being served by these zombie papers,
(06:01):
what are the effects for the general public.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Well, I think, just to pick up on a point there,
I actually went back and looked at those regions specifically
that were named in the report, and in fact the
far North through endz Me actually has still the Northland
Age and that's weekly paid for newspaper. And in the
case of Topo, it's actually still got a community newspaper
that was brought out from ends ed Me by an
independent operator. So in those particular areas there is still
(06:28):
a community newspaper or a weekly newspaper serving its purpose.
But there's no doubt that there's other parts of the
country which are being let down. Now what that means
is that local councils, local politicians, if you take it
to the nth degree, can almost get away with anything
around the council table because they're not being scrutinized. The
(06:49):
community doesn't know necessarily what's going on around the council table.
It might be, you know, a decision as simple as
local roading or something to do with rates, or you
know the library. You know, these are issues that affect
everyday people in these communities and they're not hearing about them.
Social media can play a role here, but it's still
(07:10):
in terms of councils delivering that information out, but it's
still not delivering information that's been scrutinized or mediated by
a reporter by a journalist.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, it's interesting, like how in twenty twenty five, how
relevant is a community newspaper like that these days?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Oh a lot. There's examples around the country are very
successful community newspapers that still operate. I mentioned the Devenport
flag Staff. Rob Drink does an amazing job on the
north shore here in Auckland in terms of delivering a
weekly community newspaper. I just looked at some of his
latest editions are up to forty pages, chock a full
of ads. Now, of course I don't know what the
(07:50):
yields are on those ads. So all of the community
editors and executives that they speak to that they say
they're operating at low margins, so's you know, they're not
getting rich by any means. But they to tea. They
all talk about the purpose of the job serving their communities,
being really closely connected to the communities.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
And so there's still.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Around seventy community newspapers listed on the Community Newspapers Association
website that is doing a great job, and so yeah,
I wouldn't write them off at all. I think what
we've seen in the recent times is the corporate's kind
of exiting the business of community newspapers and independent operators
who have been there for a long time. They might
(08:36):
be taking on more titles, or there might be some
new individuals coming in entirely seeing an opportunity to help
their own local communities.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
You mentioned local politicians and things, and obviously we've got
local elections coming up and then in general election next year.
How do you think the effects of all this are
going to be felt in those two.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
That, yeah, it's a great question. With the local Boody
elections next month, and again I've been looking at some
of the local community coverage and they do have extensive coverage,
whether that's Q and A's with their mayoral candidates or
their council and that's where it's important that audiences and
communities here from these people who expect to be elected
(09:17):
to the councils and paid for over the next three years.
Gavin Allis in his paper is very clear that he
thinks the news deserts will become more plentiful in the
next twelve months and that's a real worry, he says
leading up to the general election, where yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
He said thinks the term is going to become ubiquitous
by general election next year.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
That's right, and it is already ubiquitous in other parts
of the world. You know, there are examples in Australia,
the US especially, and the UK where there are these
areas that aren't covered by any form of media whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
There's an interesting statistic about The New York Times has
more journalists than the entirety of New Zealand. It's about
fourteen hundred in New Zealand, according to a spin off
survey from last year, versus seventeen hundred employed by the
New York Times. It sounds like a pretty stark comparison.
But you know, when you look at the population of
(10:15):
New York is higher than the population of New Zealand,
So what is that comparison.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Actually, yeah, that is a relevant point. And of course
the New York Times would argue that it's actually an
international media company as well, so it's covering the world
almost But nevertheless, I think it does play to a
point that one singular media company, the most successful arguably
newspaper publishing company in the world, has more journalists than
(10:41):
an entire country. Now, New Zealand because of its geographic nature,
just our physicality, you know, we are very spread out
in terms of our population base. So there are pockets
of the country with tiny communities. I've just come back
from a road trip of the entire country, and I've
gone into brilliant parts of the country. Places might have
ten permanent residents. Now, of course they don't necessarily have
(11:04):
a local newspaper or a media platform, but in the
past they've probably been served relevant content by nearby towns
or cities which have these newspapers where they're based.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, I'd want to ask about the road trip. Is
there any talking to people on the ground, like, how
is the general public feeling about this? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
And I think this again displays the importance of local
media in that and for all media companies. Is that
I was always told by a former boss of mine,
one of my first editors, the two most important roles
in any media business as your frontline salesperson in terms
of advertising, and your frontline reporter. One brings in the
(11:45):
money and one brings in the editory of the stories.
And if you can get a business model working hand
in hand in that model, then by and large you've
got a very successful business. And of course that's what
the community newspapers have been based on for many years,
people who are directly in touch with the people that
they're writing about. So everyone's on first term names basis,
(12:08):
they know what's going on that the editors themselves are
driving the roads that they're writing about every day, you know,
And so that's a really critical part of what makes
the successful not just a community newspaper go well, but
also any media business, is that the journalists, the editors
are out in that community that they're writing about. And
(12:29):
so what I my own observations from the road trip
having been two weeks on the road. It's not a
long time, but in every place I went to, there's
so many great stories it I mean, everyone has a story, right.
That's again another lesson that I was taught as a
young reporter. Everyone has a story, and if you just
can sit down face to face, you'll get a lot
more out of people than maybe a phone call or
(12:52):
a zoom call.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah, lock, I probably couldn't have predicted what would have
happened if ire reflect back on eighteen months ago. I
knew the challenges ahead for the business absolutely, but the
continued recession and advertising downtown in the market was sort
of really pivotal for us having to make some critical choices.
So I'm still here, So that's a good sign. And
you're right, you've got to take the wins when you can.
(13:21):
So it's been an interesting eighteen months a fire reflect
back on sort of where we were eighteen months ago.
We had to make some really hard decisions last year.
You know, the last twelve months really have seen us
deliver what has been the worst operating loss that the
business has ever experienced.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
It's interesting. We've seen a lot of closures across basically
every news organization in New Zealand. Ended Me, Stuffs, tv Z,
even Iron Zed's announcing redundancies. What are the big drive like,
is this just a money issue?
Speaker 2 (13:54):
A lot of issues so obviously and for some of
the business models, it's the advertising red new drop that
we've seen over the course of the last decade plus.
End Me of course has launched subscription service with the
New Zealand Herald, the premium service, so building up a
new revenue stream in terms of subscriptions, and that's still
(14:17):
you know, still early days. It's only five years old,
but going extremely well. But it still hasn't matched that
traditional print advertising revenue that for so long has sustained
and continues to play a critical role for the company,
saying with television, you know, for many, many years television
advertising revenue was sky high. Nowadays TVNZ's revenue for instances
(14:41):
in the two hundred millions rather than the three hundred
or four hundred millions, and so media companies have obviously
had to adapt to less revenue by cutting costs. We've
seen that with everybody, and yes, you're right, we are
now seeing it with our public broadcaster to RINZ as well.
Government different issues slightly and that it's a reflection of
(15:03):
the current economy is having to cut costs across the
public service in rnz's impacted by that, but a lot
of factors. Obviously, the rise of social media has seen
Google and Facebook come in and take away at least
eighty percent of the traditional revenue that media companies have
relied upon to fund their newsrooms.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And so these cuts they're being felt globally then I
assume they are.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I mean particularly in countries such as New Zealand, the UK,
Australia and the US and all of those countries, media
companies are just talking to their governments and bureaucrats about
just rearranging settings. If you like to try it even
the playing field up, and we've seen that in New
(15:49):
Zealand in the last few years where the Fair Digital
News Bargaining Bill has been a much debated but not
yet past piece of legislation which would require this social
media companies to start contributing to the revenue streams of
the media companies that are relying on the journalism to
fund their business, to build their business models, and so
(16:10):
the media companies have been arguing that social media has
a part to play here.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Keeping it global as well. It's interesting just looking at
in the last week what's hapding the US. You know,
we've seen Donald Trump on Friday flow to the idea
of pulling the licenses of TV stations that disagree with
her will criticize him, and then Jimmy Kimmel being taken
off the air as well. So these were political decisions
(16:36):
rather than financial. What do you think of New Zealand
government's relationship with the media.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Well, I bumped into actually the Media and Communications Minister
Paul Goldsmith this morning. As far as I'm aware, the
executives and the boards have a decent dialogue with the government.
I think there's an argument that the government has not
with any sense of urgency, addressed the issues that the
(17:03):
media companies have been raising for several years now. And
of course, if you remember Melissa Lee was lost her
role as the Media and Communications Minister last year because
she was seen not to be doing enough well, you
could argue that Paul Goldsmith has been similarly restrained. Now
(17:24):
what's going on around that coalition table only they know,
but what we do know as a public is that
you have New Zealand first, which has been opposed to,
for instance, the Sunday advertising ban being lifted for television
in the mornings and so that's played a part in
that being stored. And then you have ACT which is
opposed to the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. So you've
(17:47):
kind of heard in cats around the cabinet table in
terms of all this different possible media legislation. You have
the National Party in the middle. It's having to appease
two different parties and in the meantime, these so called
solutions are not getting passed.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
I remember National were pretty against the potential merger of
rn Z and TVNZ as well back a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
That's right, and of course Chris Hipkins shortly before the
general election pulled that as a piece of the Labor
Party policy as well, so it was a sort of
an Ardurn lead piece of legislation. Hipkins put it on
the back burner, quashed it, and of course it never
went ahead. There is an argument now, with RNZ moving
(18:31):
into the TVNZ building in the coming six months, that
that may see a lot more cooperation and collaboration between
the two public broadcasters. That has to happen, and so
it's almost a merger by stealth where you might see
some back room initiatives being shared. Initially that might be
some administrative financial kind of areas, but I also see
(18:52):
a huge opportunity for the two newsrooms of the public
broadcasters to collaborate on some major US investigations or coverage
of breaking store and things like that. And I'm sure
the two chief executives, Paul Thompson and Jody O'Donnell are
no doubt talking about that kind of possibility already.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Do you see any hope in the future of this?
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Always an optimist, always an optimist, and I do see hope,
and whether that's you know, we've talked today about some
of the examples at the grassroots community level there are
some amazing people doing good stuff in our regions and
in our communities. I see with the likes of you know,
we just look at the arrangement we're in today. This
is the New Zealand Herald broadcasting a daily podcast, which
(19:35):
was unheard of even five years ago. Right as media
companies have converged and understood through the use of data,
just audience habits and what audiences are interested in. And
remember we have real time data now can we don't
need to wait for sales data for a newspaper in
a week's time kind of thing. We know instantaneously how
(19:56):
audience is enjoying or not, you know, a certain platform.
But at the heart of it, I always think people
they have a deep desire to know what's going on
around them. And that's where journalism plays a role in
terms of making sure that we are you know, it's
almost tweeted that, but that we are holding the powerful
(20:18):
to account and that we are explaining issues to our
audiences clearly and concisely, fairly and balanced and so always
an optimist, there will always be that opportunity, you know,
audiences digitally for the likes of the Herald and stuff
and r and Z and others have never been higher.
(20:39):
It's just getting that business model right. And you know, yes,
we still need the advertisers absolutely, but also finding other
revenue streams to ensure that the newsrooms can stay as
well resourced as possible.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Oh well, I think that's a great optimistic note to
end on, so we'll leave it there. Thank you so
much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Great, thank you.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at inzidherld dot co dot inz. The Front Page is
produced by Jane Yee. I'm Richard Martin. Subscribe to The
Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts,
and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
Just a quick note before we start the show. In
an episode of The Front Page published on Thursday, Senior
Herald writer Simon Wilson said that the Character Coalition believed
apartment living should be further out from the central city
than Mount Roskill. This was incorrect. The coalition tells us
it supports apartment living in the central city and in
(00:21):
areas appropriately located in inner city suburbs and near railway stations. Kyoda,
I'm Richard Martin in for Chelsea Daniels and this is
the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New
Zealand Herald. Over the past decade, New Zealand has seen
(00:44):
dozens of community newspapers shut down, newsroom rolls cut and
programs taken off the air. A new discussion paper by
former Enzied Herald editor in chief Gavin Alice warns that
these changes are creating news deserts, is where communities have
little to no access to local reporting. The report highlights
(01:05):
the Far North topor South Tartanaki and Central Hawks Bay
as regions already showing signs of reduced coverage, while parts
of Auckland and Wellington are also being affected. The paper
argues that without intervention. The impacts will become more visible
during upcoming elections with reduced scrutiny of local government and
(01:25):
fewer reliable sources of information for voters. So how widespread
is the problem and what are the possible solutions? Today
in ZID Herald editor at Large Shane Curry joins me
to discuss what the rise of news deserts could mean
for New Zealand. All right, so first off, Shane, can
(01:47):
you explain the concept of a news desert to me?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I can. The news desert was first coined in the
US actually about eleven thirteen years ago, and it's basically
an area could be graphic area or an area population
where critical information isn't reaching the people. So it might
be what the local council is up to, critical decisions
(02:11):
that are being made on behalf of a community that
the community is simply not hearing about because there is
a lack of a media platform, whether that's a traditional
community newspaper or a radio television network in the case
of the States, you know, with the network system that
they have over there. So it's really that inability for
(02:32):
a community to discuss information to know what's going on.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
And so do you think New Zealand has these news
deserts or sort in the report mentions that we might
be only ankled deep in the sand.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It's coming that Gavin Alys has completed a very extensive
report and he has looked at geographic regions and he's
pinpointed a couple in particular, the far North areas actually
of Wellington and Auckland. And if you're call that just recently,
Stuff is closed seven of its community titles in Auckland.
I mean, Auckland's a massive city, right, it's really a
(03:08):
combination of lots of different cities or small towns if
you like, as a lot of people have said in
the past, and so a lot of those areas within
Auckland have lost their community paper. Now there's a big
debate as to whether those community papers were serving a purpose.
Hence why the argument was that they lost a lot
of advertising revenue, readership dropped and Stuff had no choice
(03:31):
but to kind of close them.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, because there's talk of like the zombie or ghost newspapers,
and so that might have been sort of what some
of those were before they were shut down.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
That's right, And look, Kevin Allis points particularly to STUFF
and NZME which publishes The New Zealand Herald, that they've
both closed around forty titles in recent years, forty community titles. Now,
what's happened is that big Corporate's right, they're always needing
to make a profit. They looking at their cost lines
(04:01):
all the time. I've been involved myself around the exec
table looking at cost lines. The model that was introduced
for a lot of these community papers in order to
reduce costs was that they would share some pages of
the similar content. Fine in theory, great in theory, and
it does work where it has an impact, though, as
if a story is irrelevant to the community that it's serving,
(04:24):
so great if it's say puzzles, or if you have
a general weather map for the areas covered. But if
you're then getting into stories which are from completely different regions,
then of course the reader is going to say, well,
this doesn't impact me at all. And in fact Rob Drin,
who runs the Flags newspaper in Devenport, which is a
(04:45):
very successful community newspaper, he actually studied the North Shore Times,
the Stuff community paper for several months and found for
a long period there was hardly any local faces in
the paper.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Towards the end, yes, so I guess zombie newspaper. It's
just hobbling together. So there's no actual original part of
it left.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Well, there's a little bit, there's not a lot, though
it's a very small percentage of the overall package. Of course,
these community papers also have to rely on a decent
share of advertising, and so the successful ones continue to
have a more than fifty percent ratio of advertisements to
editorial content, and so you really do have to make
the most of that those editorial pages that are left
(05:29):
to cover. But yeah, the zombie paper is essentially one
where that editorial content is possibly stories from other areas
of the region or the country and are not directly
relevant to that audience.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
So for some of those areas highlighted, the fun No
Top or South Tananaky, Central Hawk's Baywood, those are some
of the ones highlighted as being uncovered already. So in
those areas where they're looking at potentially becoming a news
desert or you know, only being served by these zombie papers,
(06:01):
what are the effects for the general public.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Well, I think, just to pick up on a point there,
I actually went back and looked at those regions specifically
that were named in the report, and in fact the
far North through endz Me actually has still the Northland
Age and that's weekly paid for newspaper. And in the
case of Topo, it's actually still got a community newspaper
that was brought out from ends ed Me by an
independent operator. So in those particular areas there is still
(06:28):
a community newspaper or a weekly newspaper serving its purpose.
But there's no doubt that there's other parts of the
country which are being let down. Now what that means
is that local councils, local politicians, if you take it
to the nth degree, can almost get away with anything
around the council table because they're not being scrutinized. The
(06:49):
community doesn't know necessarily what's going on around the council table.
It might be, you know, a decision as simple as
local roading or something to do with rates, or you
know the library. You know, these are issues that affect
everyday people in these communities and they're not hearing about them.
Social media can play a role here, but it's still
(07:10):
in terms of councils delivering that information out, but it's
still not delivering information that's been scrutinized or mediated by
a reporter by a journalist.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, it's interesting, like how in twenty twenty five, how
relevant is a community newspaper like that these days?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Oh a lot. There's examples around the country are very
successful community newspapers that still operate. I mentioned the Devenport
flag Staff. Rob Drink does an amazing job on the
north shore here in Auckland in terms of delivering a
weekly community newspaper. I just looked at some of his
latest editions are up to forty pages, chock a full
of ads. Now, of course I don't know what the
(07:50):
yields are on those ads. So all of the community
editors and executives that they speak to that they say
they're operating at low margins, so's you know, they're not
getting rich by any means. But they to tea. They
all talk about the purpose of the job serving their communities,
being really closely connected to the communities.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
And so there's still.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Around seventy community newspapers listed on the Community Newspapers Association
website that is doing a great job, and so yeah,
I wouldn't write them off at all. I think what
we've seen in the recent times is the corporate's kind
of exiting the business of community newspapers and independent operators
who have been there for a long time. They might
(08:36):
be taking on more titles, or there might be some
new individuals coming in entirely seeing an opportunity to help
their own local communities.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
You mentioned local politicians and things, and obviously we've got
local elections coming up and then in general election next year.
How do you think the effects of all this are
going to be felt in those two.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
That, yeah, it's a great question. With the local Boody
elections next month, and again I've been looking at some
of the local community coverage and they do have extensive coverage,
whether that's Q and A's with their mayoral candidates or
their council and that's where it's important that audiences and
communities here from these people who expect to be elected
(09:17):
to the councils and paid for over the next three years.
Gavin Allis in his paper is very clear that he
thinks the news deserts will become more plentiful in the
next twelve months and that's a real worry, he says
leading up to the general election, where yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
He said thinks the term is going to become ubiquitous
by general election next year.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
That's right, and it is already ubiquitous in other parts
of the world. You know, there are examples in Australia,
the US especially, and the UK where there are these
areas that aren't covered by any form of media whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
There's an interesting statistic about The New York Times has
more journalists than the entirety of New Zealand. It's about
fourteen hundred in New Zealand, according to a spin off
survey from last year, versus seventeen hundred employed by the
New York Times. It sounds like a pretty stark comparison.
But you know, when you look at the population of
(10:15):
New York is higher than the population of New Zealand,
So what is that comparison.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Actually, yeah, that is a relevant point. And of course
the New York Times would argue that it's actually an
international media company as well, so it's covering the world
almost But nevertheless, I think it does play to a
point that one singular media company, the most successful arguably
newspaper publishing company in the world, has more journalists than
(10:41):
an entire country. Now, New Zealand because of its geographic nature,
just our physicality, you know, we are very spread out
in terms of our population base. So there are pockets
of the country with tiny communities. I've just come back
from a road trip of the entire country, and I've
gone into brilliant parts of the country. Places might have
ten permanent residents. Now, of course they don't necessarily have
(11:04):
a local newspaper or a media platform, but in the
past they've probably been served relevant content by nearby towns
or cities which have these newspapers where they're based.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, I'd want to ask about the road trip. Is
there any talking to people on the ground, like, how
is the general public feeling about this? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
And I think this again displays the importance of local
media in that and for all media companies. Is that
I was always told by a former boss of mine,
one of my first editors, the two most important roles
in any media business as your frontline salesperson in terms
of advertising, and your frontline reporter. One brings in the
(11:45):
money and one brings in the editory of the stories.
And if you can get a business model working hand
in hand in that model, then by and large you've
got a very successful business. And of course that's what
the community newspapers have been based on for many years,
people who are directly in touch with the people that
they're writing about. So everyone's on first term names basis,
(12:08):
they know what's going on that the editors themselves are
driving the roads that they're writing about every day, you know,
And so that's a really critical part of what makes
the successful not just a community newspaper go well, but
also any media business, is that the journalists, the editors
are out in that community that they're writing about. And
(12:29):
so what I my own observations from the road trip
having been two weeks on the road. It's not a
long time, but in every place I went to, there's
so many great stories it I mean, everyone has a story, right.
That's again another lesson that I was taught as a
young reporter. Everyone has a story, and if you just
can sit down face to face, you'll get a lot
more out of people than maybe a phone call or
(12:52):
a zoom call.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah, lock, I probably couldn't have predicted what would have
happened if ire reflect back on eighteen months ago. I
knew the challenges ahead for the business absolutely, but the
continued recession and advertising downtown in the market was sort
of really pivotal for us having to make some critical choices.
So I'm still here, So that's a good sign. And
you're right, you've got to take the wins when you can.
(13:21):
So it's been an interesting eighteen months a fire reflect
back on sort of where we were eighteen months ago.
We had to make some really hard decisions last year.
You know, the last twelve months really have seen us
deliver what has been the worst operating loss that the
business has ever experienced.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
It's interesting. We've seen a lot of closures across basically
every news organization in New Zealand. Ended Me, Stuffs, tv Z,
even Iron Zed's announcing redundancies. What are the big drive like,
is this just a money issue?
Speaker 2 (13:54):
A lot of issues so obviously and for some of
the business models, it's the advertising red new drop that
we've seen over the course of the last decade plus.
End Me of course has launched subscription service with the
New Zealand Herald, the premium service, so building up a
new revenue stream in terms of subscriptions, and that's still
(14:17):
you know, still early days. It's only five years old,
but going extremely well. But it still hasn't matched that
traditional print advertising revenue that for so long has sustained
and continues to play a critical role for the company,
saying with television, you know, for many, many years television
advertising revenue was sky high. Nowadays TVNZ's revenue for instances
(14:41):
in the two hundred millions rather than the three hundred
or four hundred millions, and so media companies have obviously
had to adapt to less revenue by cutting costs. We've
seen that with everybody, and yes, you're right, we are
now seeing it with our public broadcaster to RINZ as well.
Government different issues slightly and that it's a reflection of
(15:03):
the current economy is having to cut costs across the
public service in rnz's impacted by that, but a lot
of factors. Obviously, the rise of social media has seen
Google and Facebook come in and take away at least
eighty percent of the traditional revenue that media companies have
relied upon to fund their newsrooms.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And so these cuts they're being felt globally then I
assume they are.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I mean particularly in countries such as New Zealand, the UK,
Australia and the US and all of those countries, media
companies are just talking to their governments and bureaucrats about
just rearranging settings. If you like to try it even
the playing field up, and we've seen that in New
(15:49):
Zealand in the last few years where the Fair Digital
News Bargaining Bill has been a much debated but not
yet past piece of legislation which would require this social
media companies to start contributing to the revenue streams of
the media companies that are relying on the journalism to
fund their business, to build their business models, and so
(16:10):
the media companies have been arguing that social media has
a part to play here.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Keeping it global as well. It's interesting just looking at
in the last week what's hapding the US. You know,
we've seen Donald Trump on Friday flow to the idea
of pulling the licenses of TV stations that disagree with
her will criticize him, and then Jimmy Kimmel being taken
off the air as well. So these were political decisions
(16:36):
rather than financial. What do you think of New Zealand
government's relationship with the media.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Well, I bumped into actually the Media and Communications Minister
Paul Goldsmith this morning. As far as I'm aware, the
executives and the boards have a decent dialogue with the government.
I think there's an argument that the government has not
with any sense of urgency, addressed the issues that the
(17:03):
media companies have been raising for several years now. And
of course, if you remember Melissa Lee was lost her
role as the Media and Communications Minister last year because
she was seen not to be doing enough well, you
could argue that Paul Goldsmith has been similarly restrained. Now
(17:24):
what's going on around that coalition table only they know,
but what we do know as a public is that
you have New Zealand first, which has been opposed to,
for instance, the Sunday advertising ban being lifted for television
in the mornings and so that's played a part in
that being stored. And then you have ACT which is
opposed to the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. So you've
(17:47):
kind of heard in cats around the cabinet table in
terms of all this different possible media legislation. You have
the National Party in the middle. It's having to appease
two different parties and in the meantime, these so called
solutions are not getting passed.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
I remember National were pretty against the potential merger of
rn Z and TVNZ as well back a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
That's right, and of course Chris Hipkins shortly before the
general election pulled that as a piece of the Labor
Party policy as well, so it was a sort of
an Ardurn lead piece of legislation. Hipkins put it on
the back burner, quashed it, and of course it never
went ahead. There is an argument now, with RNZ moving
(18:31):
into the TVNZ building in the coming six months, that
that may see a lot more cooperation and collaboration between
the two public broadcasters. That has to happen, and so
it's almost a merger by stealth where you might see
some back room initiatives being shared. Initially that might be
some administrative financial kind of areas, but I also see
(18:52):
a huge opportunity for the two newsrooms of the public
broadcasters to collaborate on some major US investigations or coverage
of breaking store and things like that. And I'm sure
the two chief executives, Paul Thompson and Jody O'Donnell are
no doubt talking about that kind of possibility already.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Do you see any hope in the future of this?
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Always an optimist, always an optimist, and I do see hope,
and whether that's you know, we've talked today about some
of the examples at the grassroots community level there are
some amazing people doing good stuff in our regions and
in our communities. I see with the likes of you know,
we just look at the arrangement we're in today. This
is the New Zealand Herald broadcasting a daily podcast, which
(19:35):
was unheard of even five years ago. Right as media
companies have converged and understood through the use of data,
just audience habits and what audiences are interested in. And
remember we have real time data now can we don't
need to wait for sales data for a newspaper in
a week's time kind of thing. We know instantaneously how
(19:56):
audience is enjoying or not, you know, a certain platform.
But at the heart of it, I always think people
they have a deep desire to know what's going on
around them. And that's where journalism plays a role in
terms of making sure that we are you know, it's
almost tweeted that, but that we are holding the powerful
(20:18):
to account and that we are explaining issues to our
audiences clearly and concisely, fairly and balanced and so always
an optimist, there will always be that opportunity, you know,
audiences digitally for the likes of the Herald and stuff
and r and Z and others have never been higher.
(20:39):
It's just getting that business model right. And you know, yes,
we still need the advertisers absolutely, but also finding other
revenue streams to ensure that the newsrooms can stay as
well resourced as possible.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Oh well, I think that's a great optimistic note to
end on, so we'll leave it there. Thank you so
much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Great, thank you.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at inzidherld dot co dot inz. The Front Page is
produced by Jane Yee. I'm Richard Martin. Subscribe to The
Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts,
and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
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