The Spinoff last week sent up a distress flare whose red glare lit up not only a ship in peril but sent a clear message that seaworthiness cannot be judged on popularity.
In an open letter on its platform, The Spinoff’s founder, chief executive, and editor stated that the gap between the number of people who enjoy what The Spinoff does, and the number prepared to pay for it, was too large. The letter followed the worst monthly financial decline in its 10-year history, with the platform later revealing its revenue was down by a third in September.
The organisation founded by Duncan Greive appeals to a uniquely wide audience – from Gen-zers to Baby Boomers whose cultural interests are not frozen in the 60s. Its financial situation, however, has forced it to make significant staff cuts, freeze all freelance editorial commissions, put two of its newsletters to sleep, and even pause its popular Friday Poem.
The letter made a plea for donations, and mirrored what New Zealand Geographic publisher James Frankham did a few weeks ago. There was, however, one significant difference: Frankham was soliciting subscriptions while The Spinoff asked for donations.
And last weekend James Frankham told supporters that his magazine is now less than 500 away from reaching its sustainability target of 10,000 subscribers (if you haven’t done so already, put your hand in your pocket).
Subscriptions seek an ongoing commitment and can be either habit-forming or self-renewing. They have a certainty that extends beyond donations, through which a donor can feel they have ‘done their bit’ with a one-off few dollars.
I can understand The Spinoff’s reluctance to go down a paywalled path. A sizeable proportion of its audience have never paid for news and don’t see why they should start now. Their view – and their experience – is that subscriptions are for movies and other forms of entertainment.
To paywall The Spinoff would therefore come at considerable risk. However, it may well be time for Duncan Greive to open a conversation on the matter with his audience. He and his management team have been open with the public on their financial plight and their call for support. Unless an avalanche of money comes their way through donations, they should poll their users on the question of a paywall. While I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to this, it could be a simple choice: Paywall or nothing
Personally, I think The Spinoff is worth paying for, and I signed up some years ago to be an annual donor. I also donate and pay subscriptions to other news sites in recognition of the fact that news costs money to produce and I should support digital sites in the same way that I pay for a newspaper or a newsstand magazine. I have no problem with the concept of paying for news, having come from a cash-strapped household where my parents still found enough money to subscribe to both morning and evening newspapers.
Paywalling was only one of the issues raised in my mind by the open letter. The most fundamental cause of concern was the fragility of a media outlet that previously seemed to tick all of the financial boxes for digital news startups.
Its commercial offering is multi-faceted: To use its own words it offers “bespoke content partnerships on site”. That includes everything from display advertisements, through content sponsorship, to what it calls ‘partner editorial content’. The latter is a form of story telling – which may be multimedia – in which the ‘partner’ has a stake and in which their brand may be embedded. There’s no subterfuge – associations are clearly labelled – but the content is produced by The Spinoff. The results may stand in contrast to some of the ‘paid content’ emanating from an advertiser’s marketing department. The Spinoff also has extensive commercial production resources that it offers to clients.
The second element that I had thought contributed to its robustness was its extension beyond websites to podcasts and video. While it wisely stayed away from print, The Spinoff seemed unafraid to explore each digital variant as it came along.
The third element was its ability to attract contestable funding from government agencies through innovative programme and project ideas. Each year it seemed to get a share of the money available from Wellington for news and cultural production.
And, finally, it seemed to have the measure of its potential market. It currently has a monthly unique audience of 412,000. In the first quarter this year it had 1.87 million local readers who also listened to more than eight million minutes of podcasting and watched 38,500 hours of video. Crucially, in an age when media buying is determined by BYTs (bright young things), half its audience are Gen-z or millennials. Here is a local platform delivering the audience the multinationals claim as their exclusive domain.
So, it looks like The Spinoff does all the right things. Sadly, that is not proving to be a winning game.
Strike one: Only 9080 people (two per cent) in that large audience help to pay to keep operations going.
Strike two: The local advertising market is in freefall and domestic buyers lack the cash for sophisticated campaigns. Meanwhile, the vast bulk of available advertising money is being sucked up by offshore technology giants like Meta and Alphabet and carried on their own platforms.
Strike three: The Spinoff failed to score in the latest government contestable funding rounds. None of its proposals to NZ on Air was successful in the past two rounds, its allocation from Creative New Zealand has been halved, and the (maliciously maligned) Public Interest Journalism Fund is about to be wound up.
Duncan Greive went into this business a decade ago with his eyes wide open and he would be the first to say the world does not owe him or his staff a living.
Three things, however, are clear.
Firstly, The Spinoff meets an important social and cultural need by exposing younger New Zealanders to perspectives on news and opinion with which they can engage.
Second, if people want The Spinoff to keep producing its unique blend of content, they must be prepared to pay for it. That includes both the audience now being exhorted to donate, and those who want access to that audience. Prominently included in the latter is the government, which (apart from an urgent look at content funding decisions) pours more marketing and advertising dollars into Google, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok than it does into local media including The Spinoff.
Third, the plight of The Spinoff is an alarming example of just how fragile our news media ecosystem has become. If one bad quarter can tip the balance between survival and extinction – as seems to be implicit in The Spinoff’s open letter – we are standing on a very thin crust. Yet there is no coherent plan by the government or the industry itself to create a sustainable environment by introducing new financial models and structures.
The public can, in the short term, solve the first issue. James Frankham’s remarkably successful campaign has got New Zealand Geographic within a whisker of sustainability. If The Spinoff succeeds in its goal of doubling its annual donations and secures a rethink on some government funding, it can keep the beasts at bay.
Those beasts will, however, continue to circle like an arctic wolfpack, picking off the weak. In the absence of a defensive strategy, they will get closer to the centre of the herd. When they do that, the herd will cease to exist.
Good article, but no mention of why taxpayer money is funding left-biased media in the first place.
It’s shocking a lot of Kiwis to learn just how much of their tax bill is funding content they can’t stand.
Curia polling from last year shows voters believe The Spinoff is +14% left wing, and only just behind 1News and Stuff for political bias on the left (and way behind ZB and The Platform for political bias towards the right, however, The Platform claims they get no taxpayer funding so can do as they please).
SOURCE: https://thefacts.nz/other/political-leanings-media/
Left, right, centre…it is the nature of a pluralistic media that the landscape has different shades of opinion. However, it is a little too easy labelling an entire outlet with bias of one shade or another. Inevitably you will find within it contributors with contrasting viewpoints. That’s as it should be. The Spinoff is no different.
. . .
“Good article,
but no mention of why
taxpayer money is funding
left-biased media in the
first place. ”
Pew Institute studies show that distrust towards news media in the US is near even split into thirds – between left, right, and undecided. This seems to fit in with an old newsroom adage that if ‘they’re both pissed off? You’re doing your job right.’
A third undecided is a little high for my liking, but perhaps a natural split between left and right given the ratios.
Similar story in #NZinc ?
Set aside obvious differences, there’s huge US influence on our economy and culture within New Zealand. Decades of influence including US media training for politicians, but also media; TVNZ most notably in its shift from public broadcaster towards an infotainment format as far back as the 1980s. Or even 1972, when Chicago School of Economics enthusiast Roger Douglas was given NZBC to whip into shape.
Trusted voices upon the right, but with public broadcasting roots – such a conundrum. What is not, tho, is that long-fabled public distrust in journalism is anything but.
People might not trust news media in total. Some see as media right, or left. On the right, majority trust for news media groups around examples like Fox News or Truth Social. On the left, perhaps, The Guardian, and Bluesky. By far the fastest growing group, tho?
Those who distrust news media from ‘both sides’.
Closely linked with so-called independents, this supposedly undecided third is in fact more likely the same as the leftists and rightists. But with added steps. So many added steps.
Perhapes what unites the undecided is debate and sometimes contempt around normal or ‘normie’ perceptions of left and right. Perceptions include seeing one of the world’s most deeply corporatised public broadcasting systems as suffering leftist bias; socialist gravy trainers. Similarly, leftists see ‘corporate’ media as hopelessly ‘mainstream’; eg, big business troughers.
Given percentages, this seems to be an almost healthy level of distrust from all sides, even if the ratios cut a little too fine for my comfort.
Lastly, to claim that an outlet such as The Platform can “do as they please” because they are not publicly funded? Is to place great faith in private investors, and potentially myriad interests. We need an equally complex media scene to accurately reflect those interests, public and private?
. .