Tag: Paul Goldsmith

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” →

Brace yourself: This could be crunch year for NZ news media

Buckle up because 2025 is going to be a rough ride for news media.

It has started inauspiciously with NZME’s announcement of 38 job losses at the New Zealand Herald and NewstalkZB, the full impact of which has yet to be seen. That followed the closure of 11 of the company’s community newspapers at the end of last year, plus the loss of 11 roles in its regional newsrooms last July.

We began the year with the effects of TVNZ’s cuts, announced last November, starting to appear. Familiar faces on its sports team reappeared on Sky and Trackside over the summer break, and yesterday Breakfast was back with a reduced lineup but no reduction in forgettable chitchat. The state-owned broadcaster has lost almost 130 staff since 2023. The latest tranche took out 50 jobs and adverse effects on its newsgathering are inevitable.

In December Whakaata Māori cut 27 roles and ended its news programme. Jobs have also gone at Stuff, although musical chairs have made it difficult to determine exactly how many have gone. Earlier, of course, TV3’s American owners walked away from their responsibility to provide its own news service.

What more, you ask, could be lost when news services have been cut to the bone? The answer: A lot. Our commercial news media are in a worrying financial state. Continue reading “Brace yourself: This could be crunch year for NZ news media” →

Latest canary in coalmine littered with dead birds

 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” →