The hierarchy of New Zealand’s news media organisations, once a relatively stable environment, is changing with the speed and effect of a Nek Minnit video. In part, it is a consequence of vacancies and reorganisations but several of the moves also point to a deeper-seated issue. Some media executives have given so much of their lives to the job that they have had an epiphany and want some of that life back.
Three senior news executives in as many months have quit their jobs, not to take up another position, but to take extended breaks. RNZ’s head of news, Richard Sutherland, was first. He was followed by senior TVNZ producer Sam Robertson, and last week Miriyana Alexander – the star of NZME’s premium subscription drive – resigned and said she was taking a break from journalism altogether.
The news business has always been demanding (and I speak from experience) but I sense that today’s media executives have been subjected to a form of mission creep. In military terms, mission creep is defined as ‘the unintended but almost inexorable tendency of military actions to broaden beyond their original scope’. As a study by the University of Windsor put it, it’s when a military force that sets out on a humanitarian intervention to build schools becomes embroiled in a civil war to defend those schools from attack.
The inexorable expansion of their roles is due to a number of factors such as technological change, new competitors, and economics. Too often the effect has been a demand that they do more with less.
Commercial media that have endured static or falling revenue for more than a decade put added pressure on news executives, which has led to a blurring of the lines and forced people who are very good journalists to spend too much of their time on the ‘business’ end of their enterprises.
Sure, editors have always had an eye on the business. Circulation, readership and audience ratings have never been far from their mind because next year’s editorial budget depended on it. However, declining financial fortunes across the sector has made commercial pressures all the more pressing, and a pervading focus on digital platforms has turned online analytics into an altar at which they all must worship.
At the same time they must steer newsrooms that have been depleted by recurring rounds of cost cuts and find new ways to sustain the journalism that, let’s face it, was the reason they got into the industry in. the first place.
So, I have every sympathy with those executives who want to stop, smell the flowers, and learn to live a normal life again. A normal life is one where you spend time with family and friends rather than business colleagues or acquaintances, and where you go to bed at a reasonable hour rather than answering a hundred emails that mounted up during your long working ‘day’.
At this point, I can hear sarcastic remarks like ‘oh, diddums’ and ‘look at their bank balances’. Certainly, they have been well compensated for the roles they have undertaken, and others in their organisations work extremely hard for significantly lower rewards. However, with reward comes responsibility and it can weigh heavily.
Everyone has their limits and what we are now witnessing is common sense on the part of those who recognise when it is time to take a break. Too many in the news business in the past have, instead, paid the ultimate price for their dedication. The best known of those was Stuff’s creator, INL chief executive Mike Robson, who died suddenly six months after its website launched in 2000.
I have no doubt there will also be other factors that have led to decisions to walk away, even if only temporarily. Reorganisations and reshuffles have had consequential effects that may have influenced those decisions. And there will be further knock-on effects from the latest resignations.
There is plenty of scope for knock-on effects. Stuff and NZME have changed their senior management structures, TVNZ lost its chief executive and suffered the consequences of Breakfast’s Santamaria controversy, MediaWorks also lost its chief executive and was hit by a tsunami after closing Today FM, while the much anticipated (or dreaded, depending on your point of view) merger of TVNZ and RNZ was shelved. Any of those significant events could trigger cause and effect.
Last week we saw one of the results of the upheavals. Stuff’s Head of News, Mark Stevens, resigned to fill Richard Sutherland’s role at RNZ, albeit with the new (very de rigueur) title of Chief News Officer. Stevens has had a 26-year career at Stuff and its predecessors, beginning as a crime reporter on the Evening Post. Although he has no broadcasting experience, he will bring invaluable digital experience to RNZ. He edited the Stuff website for six years and was Stuff’s group digital editor for four years during its ascendency to the top news site rank. Now we await the announcement on who will fill the vacancy his resignation has created.
Alexander’s resignation from NZME leaves a significant gap in its ranks and another challenging knock-on effect. She has been one of the best performers in NZME, first as editor of the Weekend Herald and Herald on Sunday and then in successfully leading the New Zealand Herald’s risky partial move behind a paywall. The latest NZME annual report shows digital-only subscriptions grew 39 per cent in 2022 to 113,000 and now exceed print subscriptions.
Shayne Currie, in his Weekend Herald media column said Alexander’s departure will give Murray Kirkness pause for thought on structuring his leadership team. It will indeed. Kirkness last month replaced Currie (who had stepped down from his managing editor role) but with a title that does not roll so easily off the tongue – Chief Content Officer (Publishing). The move also saw a change to NZME’s executive team. Where Currie sat on that team, those responsibilities will now come under Carolyn Luey, NZME’s Chief Digital and Publishing Officer.
Currie opted last March to relieve the pressure on himself, although his version of smelling the flowers is a hard-working one: As the Herald’s eyes on the media scene he is filling pages of the paper with news and perceptive commentary.
Stuff’s changes to its senior management has revealed a curious form of what-goes-around-comes-around. Some years ago, the New Zealand Herald and its parent company (now NZME) were subjected to fundamental cultural changes by an influx of former INL (now Stuff) executives. The announcement last month of a senior management restructuring by Stuff puts three former NZME executives in its top rank – CEO Laura Maxwell (formerly NZME’s chief digital officer), Stuff Digital managing director Nadia Tolich (formerly NZME head of content development and content director of NewstalkZB), and executive commercial director Matt Headland (formerly NZME’s chief commercial officer). It is certain, however, that owner Sinead Boucher will remain at the strategic helm as executive chair.
Yet to play out is the filling of the still-vacant media chief executive chairs and, if the appointees are outsiders, the inevitable ‘new broom’ effect.
MediaWorks will be looking for someone who can restore its challenging financial position and overcoming the destabilising effect of three of its top executives following CEO Cam Wallace out the door. One of them, Dallas Gurney (who headed the now defunct Today FM), has left the business entirely and, with his wife, bought the general store in the beachside Northland town of Whananāki. That might be called ‘smelling the pohutukawa’.
As for TVNZ, there are so many wild cards that the most skilled canasta player would have a hard time picking the outcomes. Its new chair, Alastair Carruthers, interviewed by Shayne Currie in the Weekend Herald, pointed to a global search and an appointment by the end of the year. By that time the successful applicant will know the stripe of the state-owned broadcaster’s political masters and whether public service or profit is expected to take precedence.
RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson has been seen as a contender for the role ever since the RNZ/TVNZ bans were read by former broadcasting minister Kris Faafoi. Should he be appointed to the TVNZ role there will not only be a new broom in the Auckland Television Centre but also in Radio New Zealand House on The Terrace.
Whoever fills the vacant media chairs, it will probably trigger yet more soul-searching in the senior ranks over their futures. It’s time to change direction if that little voice in your head says: ‘This job is killing me’.
Bouquets
To each of the major newsrooms for their live coverage of the shootings at a downtown Auckland construction site last Thursday morning. The presence of some news crews at the FIFA fan zone at The Cloud meant an almost instant response and comprehensive coverage continued throughout the morning. Coverage was marked by high levels of professionalism and one manifestation of that was the complete absence of speculation in the early stages while it was unclear whether it was a terrorist attack. The safety of FIFA teams staying in nearby hotels was well-covered but no media speculated on the possibility that the Norwegian team could be a target because white supremacist Anders Breivik was imprisoned in Norway. Nor was there speculation over the ethnicity of the gunman. It is all too easy in adrenalin-filled moments to let the mouth get ahead of the brain. That did not happen. With the eyes of the world on Auckland, our media acquitted themselves well.
An interesting aside: The emphasis in Friday’s newspaper coverage diminished the further south it was published. The New Zealand Herald devoted the front (and seven packed inside pages) as did the Waikato Times and The Post, but The Press shared its front with a missing real estate agent and the Otago Daily Times thought job losses at Otago University were more newsworthy.
New York Times cops a loud appeal over sports gambit
The New York Times Company may be trying to ring the changes over newsroom structures by ‘shuttering’ its sports department (see last week’s Tuesday Commentary) but it has run into a solid defensive back line.
The Times Guild, the union representing the New York Times newsroom, has filed a grievance over the decision to hand sports coverage to its non-unionised subsidiary The Athletic.
In a statement, the union said: “The Times Guild has jurisdiction over journalism jobs at The Times, yet the company is claiming it has the right to subcontract to itself and have non-union workers do union work without the same job protections, wages and other benefits we have fought so hard to secure. These claims are preposterous on their face and a brazen attempt at union-busting.”
The company has yet to respond.
Those executive burnouts are no surprise. I suffered the same fate as the Auckland Star began its final nosedive. Back then (1980s), a burgeoning journalism education industry awaited people like me so our experience wasn’t lost, just reutilised. Now we are down to so few journalism training institutions (about four from 12) the option to give something back seems slender.
Thoughts on Bouquets and an interesting aside. Like real estate, journalism’s emphasis can also be influenced by the mantra “location, location, location”.
A social media comment I read in England, asked why BBC News Online had lead for several hours on “two people being killed in Auckland, who cares”. I replied because the Women’s Football World Cup was being held there and England are taking part. The story dropped away as it became clear that no terrorism was involved and it hadn’t impacted on the football. In the same way that the story stopped being of international interest in a few hours, by the next day, it also became of less national interest, as you observe, the further away a media outlet was from Auckland.
Thanks for that Paul. My colleague Denis Muller and I called it the Proximity Filter when writing about media coverage of the Christchurch mosque terrorist. In that case there was a change in emphasis the further away the media outlet was: close by and there was victim empathy, further away it was sometimes ghoulish emphasis on him and what he had done.
As you say. there may be be other reason s for people leaving, Missing out on top jobs, political internal ructions. Maybe the rapid slide of public trust in journalism might have been a factor.
John not Hohn
I must be careful here in noting that TVNZ’s shooting coverage was plainly influenced by the mature sound head of Barbara Dreaver who showed her experience, if not her age. All those years of being in Pacific news story chaos (and some places in our region do disorder and confusion exceptionally well) plainly rubbed off.
I agree, Michael. Her coverage was informative but measured. A real professional.