Over the past year, The Spinoff audience has grown dramatically. Founder and managing editor Duncan Greive explains what The Spinoff is, and how best to use it. The purpose of this note is to welcome those new and newish to The Spinoff, to show you around and generally help you understand what we’re about. Our … Read more
Stuff’s Pou Tiaki editor Carmen Parahi rallied her troops for what would become the ‘Our Truth, Tā Mātou Pono’ project on a Saturday, and pitched the idea to Stuff’s CEO the very next day. She tells Leonie Hayden about what happened next. On Monday the media-consuming public awoke to a surprise from Stuff, whose comments … Read more
The Herald reported this morning that MediaWorks was on the verge of selling its TV assets to US TV giant Discovery – but an internal email and senior source suggest the story may have been premature. A senior MediaWorks source has emphatically denied a report in the NZ Herald that a sale of Three to … Read more
When Stuff’s parent company Nine sold up in a management buyout, the sale price for the whole business was $1. So what does it actually mean when businesses are sold for a buck? When local media giant Stuff was sold earlier this week to CEO Sinead Boucher, one of the biggest talking points was the … Read more
The big media companies just want to get married. Duncan Greive makes the case for dozens of divorces instead. For the last few years, all the talk in New Zealand’s media has been of a need for consolidation. That our big for-profit media companies – TVNZ, Sky, MediaWorks, NZME and Stuff – all needed to … Read more
Duncan Greive assesses an extraordinary morning for New Zealand’s media. In the space of a tumultuous half hour New Zealand’s media landscape has been utterly transformed, with Stuff CEO Sinead Boucher completing an audacious management buyout from its Australian owners Nine, while hundreds of staff are about to be laid off at MediaWorks. The two … Read more
Internal memos from NZ’s biggest magazine company, which announced its sudden closure yesterday, state they were lobbying to change a ban on publication. But the minister responsible, Kris Faafoi, has doubled down on rejecting that position, calling those internal communications ‘contradictory’ to what they said to him directly. Updated with comment from Bauer at the foot. … Read more
Just a tiny handful of print publications will continue through the lockdown, with only daily newspapers specifically identified as being able to continue. Duncan Greive spoke to publishers of magazines and community newspapers about the impact on them and their communities. Publishers of magazines and community newspapers are reeling, after a ruling from their regulators … Read more
The proposed merger of RNZ and TVNZ has one clear international precedent – Irish national broadcaster RTÉ. Michael Andrew asks what New Zealand can learn from the Irish model. There’s a touch of comedy in the idea of a merger between RNZ and TNVZ, almost as if the two organisations were unfamiliar step siblings forced … Read more
Its first full-time reporter will lead the project, which includes a dedicated section of its homepage for New Zealand. The Guardian Australia is leading a significant move into New Zealand, confirming that it has hired its first full-time reporter in New Zealand and is introducing a new variation on the homepage specifically served to New … Read more
It’s the biggest and by far the most profitable media company in New Zealand. In today’s instalment of his series on NZ media in 2018, Duncan Greive asks media executives why no one believes in Sky any more. When the history of New Zealand media is written in the next few years, one CEO will … Read more
Every day in the leadup to Christmas, open the door to reveal a Spinoff writer’s short, sizzling commentary on a weighty subject. Our arbitrary and strictly enforced word limit: 365. Today: Alex Braae on why you should pay for journalism. You’ve got enough stuff. Your cupboards are bulging with crap. But somehow you still have … Read more