Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Family support looms as election policy battleground, warm winter heralds climate change fears, and warnings of insolvency cliff looming for government supported businesses. National has launched a policy package around support for new parents, reports Stuff. The headline announcement in it is a package of $3000 to … Read more
Even as New Zealand contemplates the end of lockdown, more closures and a major snub continue to rankle publishers, Duncan Greive reports. The magazine industry, still reeling from the abrupt closure of its biggest publisher, Bauer Media, received two further blows this week after being left out of the media session of the Epidemic Response … Read more
The shockingly fast collapse of Bauer presents the government with a momentous choice, says Duncan Greive. Will it save the media industry, or concentrate on its own? This moment was always coming. The long, steady flow of advertising revenue to the tech giants has left the private sector media gaunt, much leaner than is healthy … Read more
Today came the shocking news that Bauer Media is closing its New Zealand operation, with the loss of scores of jobs. Bauer was the publisher of most of NZ’s magazines, among them Metro, Woman’s Day, North & South, Next, Home, the Listener, Kia Ora and the NZ Women’s Weekly. Here readers, writers and former staff … Read more
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Concerns grow in the public media merger information void, costs of school return being counted, and a charter flight arranged for Wuhan evacuations. A plan is in the works to transform state broadcasting in New Zealand, with some form of merger between TVNZ and Radio … Read more
The brilliant, barnstorming founding editor of Metro, Warwick Roger, has died aged 72. In this essay first published on the Spinoff in 2017, a memoir by American writer Richard Ford prompts Sir Bob Harvey to look back on his friendship with Roger and their shared love of Ford’s books. How does friendship happen? What glue does … Read more
A new memoir by the great American writer Richard Ford leads Sir Bob Harvey to look back on his friendship with Warwick Roger, the founding editor of Metro magazine, and their shared love of Ford’s books. How does friendship happen? What glue does it take? Does it always finish in death as all stories do, … Read more
Duncan Greive sits down with Bauer CEO Paul Dykzeul and publisher Brendon Hill to talk about the state of its business, and their double down bet on print in the digital era. Bauer, by far the country’s biggest magazine publisher, is in the midst of another of its regular spasms of change. Last month it announced … Read more
On Wednesday, Simon Wilson said goodbye to Metro, where he had worked for nine years, five as editor, and to the magazine’s publisher Bauer Media, which last month made him redundant. This was his farewell speech. “They all laughed at Christopher Columbus, when he said the world was round. They all laughed when Edison recorded … Read more
The Spinoff and Barkers are proud to present a new seven-part podcast series: The Get. Each week Canon award winning journalist Naomi Arnold will interview some of New Zealand’s best feature writers and news journalists about how they hunted down the biggest stories of their careers. Anthony Byrt, 37, is an award-winning critic and journalist. … Read more
Simon Wilson writes about the October issue of Metro magazine – his last as editor. What’s a magazine for? All the things that any other media are for, of course, but also, to give readers something they can hold in their hands and love. It’s an artefact: a thing you craft with all the skill and … Read more
Former Metro contributor Duncan Greive sits down with Simon Wilson, Metro’s departing editor, to discuss his time running Auckland’s city magazine. “You’re addicted to journalese… You need to throw away the phrasebook… I’m not even sure what that means… You need to front up to this too… It’s a weak ending.” A few choice phrases … Read more