Milestones: The punctuation marks of media moments

My attitude to milestones is somewhat ambivalent: On the one hand they mark notable events, but on the other they remind me that time presses on.

Speaking of presses, a milestone was reached last week with the announcement that NZME is to acquire the printing equipment from Stuff’s Petone plant. It will replace the behemoth that has printed the New Zealand Herald since 1995 in the purpose-built Ellerslie press hall, where I stood to watch redesigned newspapers come off the press under my watch as editor.

The Petone press is only a third the size of the machine that is housed in an iconic edifice beside the Southern Motorway at Ellerslie. It is also more modern and was relocated from Australia when Fairfax (then owner of Stuff) closed its Melbourne printing site at Tullemarine. Stuff is consolidating its printing to its more modern Christchurch plant (see Tuesday Commentary March 31 2026). 

More importantly, the Petone press is right-sized for the current circulation of the Herald.  When the Ellerslie plant was established three decades ago, the paper’s net paid circulation was well over 200,000. The Herald no longer publishes its circulation figures, but it is undoubtedly selling fewer than half the number the Goss HT70 presses were designed to pump out for each issue.

The agreement between Stuff and NZME is a good one. It ensures the equipment remains in New Zealand and push out another (inevitable) milestone. It will extend the life of the print edition of the country’s largest newspaper. NZME would not be replacing its presses if the print edition was about to be dropped. The company revealed last week that there would be annual operational savings of about $7 million a year, and that could be the deciding factor in maintaining a print edition longer than would otherwise be the case. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether there is anyone looking to buy 30-year-old presses built for the golden age of newspapers. Continue reading “Milestones: The punctuation marks of media moments” →

A painless way to cut newsroom costs

Last September I warned of the prospect of news deserts developing in this country. Among my recommendations was a policy offering tax credits to news media organisations for the employment of journalists. The report was met with indifference by the politicians in a position to do something about the hollowing out of our news ecosystem.

Yesterday, the News and Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra released a report advocating the use of refundable tax offsets for the employment of journalists in Australia. It is an idea whose time has come – on both sides of the Tasman.

For two decades our news media have faced the profound effects of technological change on a business model that has become increasingly fragile. Part of their response to declining traditional revenue has been cuts to editorial staff. Those cuts have been made not with scalpels but with machetes. Our newsrooms are a shadow of what they once were, and regional newsrooms have suffered particularly deep incisions. Australia has suffered similar damage to its journalistic resource.

Payroll tax credits are not a new suggestion – such proposals have surfaced more than once in Australia. Canada and two U.S. states (New York and Illinois) have made them a reality. South Korea has an even broader scheme that embraces the creative industries, while France has tax incentives to encourage investment in news organisations. Continue reading “A painless way to cut newsroom costs” →

If you can read to the end, you are not the problem

Before my 18-year-old grandson returned to his Australian university after a short visit, I pressed to his chest a 10-page magazine article and told him to read it. It was the cover story from the August issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The story’s title was “The Age of Reading is Over”.

Earlier, his 15-year-old brother had told me how his class received a synopsis of the plot of Macbeth to help them understand Shakespeare. I said I could accept that (because my late mother’s Junior School Shakespeare copy of The Merchant of Venice has a preface that fully outlines the plot). Nevertheless, I showed him her copy of Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and told him he should read that if the Bard’s blank verse and rhyming couplets were a problem. The bestseller retains as much Shakespearean language as possible while telling wonderful stories. A copy of it was waiting for him when he returned to Sydney.

My grandsons are children of the digital age. While my childhood was defined by the six inches by nine inches dimensions of a hardback book, theirs is defined by the size of the latest mobile screen they have been able to persuade their parents to buy – roughly half that of my childhood page. And, while they are adept scrollers, I am fairly certain they have never scrolled as far as I read as I consumed 285 pages of Charles Dickens’ close typed Tale of Two Cities.

Don’t get me wrong: My grandsons do read books, but their generation has been hardwired into screen-based information.

After reading Rose Horowitch’s deeply disturbing article in the Atlantic Monthly I felt I had to embark on a personal mission prove to her wrong…in some small way. The timing of my grandsons’ visit made them ideal targets. I thought I was off to a good start when the 18-year-old assured he would read the article on the flight home. Continue reading “If you can read to the end, you are not the problem” →

Large cracks in newsrooms’ critical path to the future

The warning sign over the future of newsrooms is the one found on the London Underground: Mind the Gap.

A future newsrooms study jointly undertaken by the Financial Times and the World Association of News Publishers surveyed 86 countries, including New Zealand. It found four interconnected gaps that are preventing newsrooms from turning plans about their future into a new reality. Many are falling short on strategy, audience trust, capabilities, and skills.

There is no shortage of ideas, and the direction of travel seems to be well understood, but translating that into action is proving harder than many imagined. In the introduction to the report, FT Strategies director Lisa MacLeod issued a stark wake-up call: “Our newsrooms are not well prepared for a disrupted future”.

She put it bluntly, saying that while there was talk of “a grand game about audience-first journalism”, actual workflows tell a different story. Almost two-thirds of newsrooms are still based on single-channel legacy structures. These structures are throttling transformation because content is still produced for a primary platform and then only adapted for other purposes that should have equal (or higher) priority.

Throughout the report there are recurring references to the audience-first journalism that, in most cases, is more a noble aim than a reality. There are exceptions, however, and New Zealand provides one of them.

The report highlights a service-oriented journalism initiative by Stuff that encourages readers to contact the newsroom with problems they want Stuff journalists to investigate. Since it was launched last September, the service has received more than 500 submissions from people who are ‘ticked off’ about something. Solving Stuff has investigated everything from fraud to missing suitcases. The first 10 stories generated more than 420,000 pageviews.

The feature is notable for both its direct reader input and its transparency. It explains the steps a Stuff journalist takes to investigate the problem and, if the problem isn’t solved, it says so. The result is a feature which gives readers a sense of direct involvement that is enhanced by a candid approach on the part of the Stuff journalists involved – Natalie Akoorie and Tony Wall.

It is one example of how audience engagement can work but the problems facing newsrooms are wider and more deep-seated than can be solved with a single initiative. The challenges demand a newsroom-wide end-to-end cycle that is similar to the concept-to-market approach used in product development. Editorial departments are not always good at that sort of thing. Continue reading “Large cracks in newsrooms’ critical path to the future” →