Crux, one of New Zealand’s most outstanding regional digital news start-ups, has “gone into hibernation” and there is a question mark over whether it can emerge from a deep sleep.
The creation of news veteran Peter Newport, Crux has been serving the Southern Lakes area since 2018 (and more recently Dunedin) on a combination of digital advertising, subscriptions, and contestable government funding.
The latter dried up with the present government’s cessation of the Public Interest Journalism Fund, although segments such as Local Democracy and Open Justice continue to be funded. Crux’s access to government money has stopped and the other two sources are insufficient to sustain it.
Newport, as its founder and managing editor, announced the “hibernation” during a media panel at the Queenstown Writers’ Festival. There was no small irony in the choice of venue. Sitting next to him was Media Minister Paul Goldsmith. He said in the announcement of the ‘hibernation’ that the minister had asked for an urgent review of regional media. However, this is probably no more than a reference by Goldsmith to the task of “supporting rural connectivity initiatives around New Zealand” that he has delegated to his Under-Secretary Jenny Marcroft.
Goldsmith has picked up Labour’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill as a way for our media to extract money from the transnational search and social media platforms. If it has any chance of success (and I have my doubts) one thing is certain: local and regional operators like Crux will receive a pittance, if anything, from such ‘bargaining’. Continue reading “Latest canary in coalmine littered with dead birds”
