The ‘local rag’ is a vital part of democracy at community level

You may refer to it – with a variable mix of disdain and affection – as ‘the local rag’, but don’t call it a throwaway. Without community newspapers our local democracy is in peril.

Last week I spoke at the Community Newspapers Association conference and some of their publications, like media everywhere, are facing tough times. I expected as much, and admire the tenacity of these committed publishers and their staff who serve areas as varied as metropolitan suburbs and the hinterland of tiny rural towns.

There are about 78 community newspapers represented by the association and, leaving aside duplications, a further 52 (mostly owned by Stuff, or NZME) are part of the News Publishers Association. There has been some attrition but Community Newspapers Association president David MacKenzie says that start-ups have balanced out the casualties and membership has been stable for the past five years.

Their frequencies vary from five-days-a-week to monthly, the size from tabloid to quarter fold or less, and circulation from thousands to hundreds. Quality varies, too. Sometimes that reflects the experience of staff, but more often nowadays it is a reluctant reaction to making ends meet. 

An example of the latter is such a lack of resources that a publication is reduced to reproducing council media releases rather than sending a reporter to cover local body activities.

During the conference that led me into conversations with community publishers and editors about their relationships with local authorities. What I heard was disturbing.

Many of our community newspapers continue to devote their resources to holding councils and their elected representatives to account. The Community Newspaper of the Year in last week’s Voyager Awards, Warkworth’s Mahurangi Matters, was commended for doing just that. Some publications, however, are in a battle of wits with local authority communications staff. Continue reading “The ‘local rag’ is a vital part of democracy at community level” →

How an Irish entrepreneur took the NZ Herald into a new era

In a guest column, Michael Horton recalls how a former Irish rugby international entered the history of news media in New Zealand and closed an illustrious chapter during which the Wilson and Horton families had been at the forefront of the country’s newspaper production and the flagship New Zealand Herald.

 

Sir Anthony O’Reilly, who died on May 18 aged 88, was a brilliant man marked out for a lifetime of achievement which sadly ended following a succession of takeovers which drained his resources to the point of bankruptcy in 2015.

I first met Tony following a meeting in London with his manager during a world trip to locate a  buyer for the 30% holding in Wilson & Horton held by Brierley Investments Ltd.

I had looked for a buyer unsuccessfully in Australia, the United States of America and London and was at the point of returning to New Zealand when I was invited to meet the chief executive of the Irish Independent, Liam Healy, in London in a Park Lane Hotel.

Finally, I had found a party really interested in New Zealand and with experience in newspapers, notably with the Irish Independent owned by the remarkable Tony O’Reilly, already well-known for his charm and sporting abilities seen by all New Zealanders during a tour of the British Lions in 1959.

In 1995 I flew to Dublin with my wife Rosemary Horton to continue the conversation and see how serious the offer was and continue these talks. Continue reading “How an Irish entrepreneur took the NZ Herald into a new era” →

‘I know the truth when I see it’ … yeah, right.

I have a morbid fear that we Kiwis are not sophisticated enough to know disinformation when we see it. Worse, I worry that we don’t care.

The combination of dramatic advances in artificial intelligence and alarming declines in trust and social cohesion produce a dangerous mixture in which ‘reality’ can become a construct of what we want to believe, and what others may manipulate us into thinking.

Last Sunday, TVNZ screened the documentary Web of Chaos, which took viewers on a journey from the innocent early days of the digital highway to the sewer that part of it has become. Along the way, we saw its power to influence, corrupt, and deceive. In many respects it looked like a descent into madness. In fact, disinformation expert Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa described it as “an algorithmic amplification of psychosis”.

He was not speaking of a few unfortunates working through their mental issues on the Internet. He said there were 350,000 people in this country using alternative social media platforms – or what he called a “hellspace” – in a toxic mix of extreme attitudes, violent language and disinformation.

In the programme, Disinformation Project director Kate Hannah told how the Covid pandemic had drawn larger numbers of New Zealanders into “the disinformation space” and had led to a broadening of conspiratorial thinking. The documentary showed in graphic detail how that phenomenon had manifested itself near the end of the occupation of Parliament’s grounds. Continue reading “‘I know the truth when I see it’ … yeah, right.” →