This could be 1 News at 6

CBS_Evening_News_with_CronkiteTuesday commentary July 2020

Television New Zealand does not need a Covid-19 revenue nosedive as a reason to rethink its two-person early evening news hour. The format is a 1980s American import that should have disappeared with power shoulders and Miami Vice.

There is no journalistic benefit in presenters taking turns in reading from a teleprompter and if female/male partnerships are a gesture to gender equality, who says a single news reader must be male?

The double act hit our screens in 1989 after TVNZ brought consultants from the United States to tell it how to face competition from TV3. The advisors were surfing the wave of neoliberal marketing and peddling razzle dazzle formats. Continue reading “This could be 1 News at 6” →

[Don’t] read all about it!

mastheads
The latest readership survey shows New Zealand newspapers are very good at reporting other people’s bad news but not their own.

Last September the New Zealand Herald bragged that its Nielsen readership statistics had “soared to record levels” and this year ran an extensive story about NZME titles increasing readership in the February Nielsen survey, which it claimed was “highlighting Kiwis’ love affair with print”.

TUESDAY COMMENTARY

Last week Nielsen released its latest survey. It received no coverage in the Herald or in the Waikato Times or in the Dominion Post or in The Press or in the Otago Daily Times. Continue reading “[Don’t] read all about it!” →

Name change: Knightly Views

As of today, White Knight News becomes Knightly Views. Nothing changes but the name – a move made necessary by unfortunate associations. The old URL will still bring you to the site but please amend saved links to www.knightlyviews.com

Although knightlyviews.com continues to feature an image of a white knight chess piece, it emphatically has no connection with any white supremacist organisation and utterly rejects any the doctrines of hate to which they adhere. The chessman symbolises the knight as a chivalrous champion and one prepared to ride to the rescue of (in this context) journalism and the principles for which it stands.

The knightly image on the banner is from the Lewis chess pieces, carved from walrus ivory in the late 12th or early 13th century (probably in Trondheim, Norway).  A total of 93 pieces from a collection of games (including four chess sets) were found in a sand bank on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in 1831. They are now on display in the National Museum of Scotland.