Canadian billionaire must explain his designs on NZME…now

New Zealand-based Canadian billionaire James Grenon owes the people of this country an immediate explanation of his intentions regarding media conglomerate NZME. This cannot wait until a shareholders’ meeting at the end of April.

Is his investment in the owner of the New Zealand Herald and NewstalkZB nothing more than a money-making venture to realise the value of its real estate marketing subsidiary? Has he no more interest than putting his share of the proceeds from spinning off OneRoof into a concealed safe in his $15 million Takapuna mansion?

Or does he intent to leverage his 9.6 per cent holding and the support of other investors to take over the board (if not the company) in order to dictate the editorial direction of the country’s largest newspaper and its number one commercial radio station?

Mr Grenon has said little beyond the barest of announcements that have been released by the New Zealand Stock Exchange. While he must exercise care to avoid triggering statutory takeover obligations, he cannot simply treat NZME as another of the private equity projects that have made him very wealthy. He is dealing with an entity whose influence and obligations extend far beyond the crude world of finance.

While I do not presume for one moment that he reads this column each week, let me suspend disbelief for a moment and speak directly to him.

Come clean and tell the people of New Zealand what you are doing and, more importantly, why. Continue reading “Canadian billionaire must explain his designs on NZME…now” →

Amazon founder Bezos dims lights on democracy

Little more than a month into the new U.S. presidency, the Washington Post’s owner has dimmed the light on a motto that became a beacon for freedom during the first Trump Administration.

Democracy dies in darkness has appeared below Washington Post for the past eight years. Last week it was powdered in irony after the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, decreed in an email to staff that the newspaper’s editorial section would shift its editorial focus and that only opinions that support and defend “personal liberties” and “free markets” would be welcome.

Amazon founder Bezos had already sullied the Post’s reputation by refusing to allow it to endorse a candidate during the presidential election – an action capable of no other interpretation than support for Donald Trump.

Since then, there has been a $US1 million Amazon contribution to Trump’s inauguration and, according to the Wall Street Journal, a $US40 million deal with First Lady Melania Trump for an authorized documentary to be run on Amazon’s streaming service.

Now Bezos has openly bowed before the new emperor and dimmed the Washington Post’s lights. Continue reading “Amazon founder Bezos dims lights on democracy” →

NZME’s ‘news that resonates’ sets off bad vibrations

LSD and LCD are not so far apart. Each in its own way is a drug.

The former is lysergic acid diethylamide, a powerful hallucinogenic. The latter is an abbreviation for liquid crystal display ­– the technology that dominates your addictive television, computer and cellphone screens. It also stands for Lowest Common Denominator, an equally powerful narcotic.

Announcements last week by NZME have raised fears that the Lowest Common Denominator is going to dominate the New Zealand Herald’s online presence and, inevitably, inject even more populism into the pages of a newspaper that once stood proudly on its news values.

In January, NZME signalled planned staff cuts. Last week the realities of that plan were revealed. Thirty editorial jobs will go, including people I think it can ill afford to lose. They include political editor Claire Trevett, deputy business editor Grant Bradley, senior sports reporter Chris Rattue, science writer Jamie Morton, investigative reporter Nicholas Jones, and several other key staff.

Some, no doubt, will step willingly off the treadmill and into a more leisurely lifestyle. Others will have had enough of the stress of uncertain futures. Nonetheless, the Herald will be poorer for their going.

While the loss of good, dedicated journalists was sad in itself, I was saddened further by the company’s statement of its future strategy. Through its Media Insider Shayne Currie, the company stated that in future there would be “a stronger focus on ensuring the newsroom is focused on journalism and other content that resonates with audiences, including subscribers”.

Let me translate that: “We will give the audience what they want”.

Let me further explain: “We will be driven entirely by our online analytics – more clicks mean more of the same”. Continue reading “NZME’s ‘news that resonates’ sets off bad vibrations” →

Media reform paper: The good, the not-so-good, and the ugly

I must start by shooing the elephants back to the waiting room: There is nothing in last week’s Media Reform discussion paper that will help to sustain New Zealand journalism, nor battle the scourge of transnational social media and search platforms.

I am not dismissing the pachyderms. Far from it, the survival – let alone its sustainability – of principled journalism in this country will confront politicians (and the communities they represent) much sooner than they realise. The looming crisis must be addressed. So, too, must the impact of the Facebooks and Googles of this world.

The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill (a flawed attempt to extract some money from the platforms for news media) gets only a passing mention in the discussion paper and is clearly not intended to be part of its feedback loop. In any case, it is on hold and faces the wrath of the empowered tech oligarchs of the Trump Administration if resurrected.

So, for the moment, I will direct my attention to the content of the discussion paper released by Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith last Wednesday. It was an invitation for the public to have their say on a range of proposals affecting the wider media sector. You can access the discussion paper here .

Some of the proposals impact on news media, even if none of them actually addresses the core problems facing that portion of the sector. Each of the proposals in the paper is described as “high level” and the Coalition Government has yet to decide whether to implement any of them.

The discussion paper is devoted primarily to audio-video production and distribution. In many respects, it is a sensible response to increasingly anachronistic structures and regulation that were a product of the age of broadcasting.

There are five proposals in the paper. Continue reading “Media reform paper: The good, the not-so-good, and the ugly” →