Speaker 1: Just a quick note before we start the show. In
Speaker 1: an episode of The Front Page published on Thursday, Senior
Speaker 1: Herald writer Simon Wilson said that the Character Coalition believed
Speaker 1: apartment living should be further out from the central city
Speaker 1: than Mount Roskill. This was incorrect. The coalition tells us
Speaker 1: it supports apartment living in the central city and in
Speaker 1: areas appropriately located in inner city suburbs and near railway stations. Kyoda,
Speaker 1: I'm Richard Martin in for Chelsea Daniels and this is
Speaker 1: the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New
Speaker 1: Zealand Herald. Over the past decade, New Zealand has seen
Speaker 1: dozens of community newspapers shut down, newsroom rolls cut and
Speaker 1: programs taken off the air. A new discussion paper by
Speaker 1: former Enzied Herald editor in chief Gavin Alice warns that
Speaker 1: these changes are creating news deserts, is where communities have
Speaker 1: little to no access to local reporting. The report highlights
Speaker 1: the Far North topor South Tartanaki and Central Hawks Bay
Speaker 1: as regions already showing signs of reduced coverage, while parts
Speaker 1: of Auckland and Wellington are also being affected. The paper
Speaker 1: argues that without intervention. The impacts will become more visible
Speaker 1: during upcoming elections with reduced scrutiny of local government and
Speaker 1: fewer reliable sources of information for voters. So how widespread
Speaker 1: is the problem and what are the possible solutions? Today
Speaker 1: in ZID Herald editor at Large Shane Curry joins me
Speaker 1: to discuss what the rise of news deserts could mean
Speaker 1: for New Zealand. All right, so first off, Shane, can
Speaker 1: you explain the concept of a news desert to me?
Speaker 2: I can. The news desert was first coined in the
Speaker 2: US actually about eleven thirteen years ago, and it's basically
Speaker 2: an area could be graphic area or an area population
Speaker 2: where critical information isn't reaching the people. So it might
Speaker 2: be what the local council is up to, critical decisions
Speaker 2: that are being made on behalf of a community that
Speaker 2: the community is simply not hearing about because there is
Speaker 2: a lack of a media platform, whether that's a traditional
Speaker 2: community newspaper or a radio television network in the case
Speaker 2: of the States, you know, with the network system that
Speaker 2: they have over there. So it's really that inability for
Speaker 2: a community to discuss information to know what's going on.
Speaker 1: And so do you think New Zealand has these news
Speaker 1: deserts or sort in the report mentions that we might
Speaker 1: be only ankled deep in the sand.
Speaker 2: It's coming that Gavin Alys has completed a very extensive
Speaker 2: report and he has looked at geographic regions and he's
Speaker 2: pinpointed a couple in particular, the far North areas actually
Speaker 2: of Wellington and Auckland. And if you're call that just recently,
Speaker 2: Stuff is closed seven of its community titles in Auckland.
Speaker 2: I mean, Auckland's a massive city, right, it's really a
Speaker 2: combination of lots of different cities or small towns if
Speaker 2: you like, as a lot of people have said in
Speaker 2: the past, and so a lot of those areas within
Speaker 2: Auckland have lost their community paper. Now there's a big
Speaker 2: debate as to whether those community papers were serving a purpose.
Speaker 2: Hence why the argument was that they lost a lot
Speaker 2: of advertising revenue, readership dropped and Stuff had no choice
Speaker 2: but to kind of close them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there's talk of like the zombie or ghost newspapers,
Speaker 1: and so that might have been sort of what some
Speaker 1: of those were before they were shut down.
Speaker 2: That's right, And look, Kevin Allis points particularly to STUFF
Speaker 2: and NZME which publishes The New Zealand Herald, that they've
Speaker 2: both closed around forty titles in recent years, forty community titles. Now,
Speaker 2: what's happened is that big Corporate's right, they're always needing
Speaker 2: to make a profit. They looking at their cost lines
Speaker 2: all the time. I've been involved myself around the exec
Speaker 2: table looking at cost lines. The model that was introduced
Speaker 2: for a lot of these community papers in order to
Speaker 2: reduce costs was that they would share some pages of
Speaker 2: the similar content. Fine in theory, great in theory, and
Speaker 2: it does work where it has an impact, though, as
Speaker 2: if a story is irrelevant to the community that it's serving,
Speaker 2: so great if it's say puzzles, or if you have
Speaker 2: a general weather map for the areas covered. But if
Speaker 2: you're then getting into stories which are from completely different regions,
Speaker 2: then of course the reader is going to say, well,
Speaker 2: this doesn't impact me at all. And in fact Rob Drin,
Speaker 2: who runs the Flags newspaper in Devenport, which is a
Speaker 2: very successful community newspaper, he actually studied the North Shore Times,
Speaker 2: the Stuff community paper for several months and found for
Speaker 2: a long period there was hardly any local faces in
Speaker 2: the paper.
Speaker 1: Towards the end, yes, so I guess zombie newspaper. It's
Speaker 1: just hobbling together. So there's no actual original part of
Speaker 1: it left.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a little bit, there's not a lot, though
Speaker 2: it's a very small percentage of the overall package. Of course,
Speaker 2: these community papers also have to rely on a decent
Speaker 2: share of advertising, and so the successful ones continue to
Speaker 2: have a more than fifty percent ratio of advertisements to
Speaker 2: editorial content, and so you really do have to make
Speaker 2: the most of that those editorial pages that are left
Speaker 2: to cover. But yeah, the zombie paper is essentially one
Speaker 2: where that editorial content is possibly stories from other areas
Speaker 2: of the region or the country and are not directly
Speaker 2: relevant to that audience.
Speaker 1: So for some of those areas highlighted, the fun No
Speaker 1: Top or South Tananaky, Central Hawk's Baywood, those are some
Speaker 1: of the ones highlighted as being uncovered already. So in
Speaker 1: those areas where they're looking at potentially becoming a news
Speaker 1: desert or you know, only being served by these zombie papers,
Speaker 1: what are the effects for the general public.
Speaker 2: Well, I think, just to pick up on a point there,
Speaker 2: I actually went back and looked at those regions specifically
Speaker 2: that were named in the report, and in fact the
Speaker 2: far North through endz Me actually has still the Northland
Speaker 2: Age and that's weekly paid for newspaper. And in the
Speaker 2: case of Topo, it's actually still got a community newspaper
Speaker 2: that was brought out from ends ed Me by an
Speaker 2: independent operator. So in those particular areas there is still
Speaker 2: a community newspaper or a weekly newspaper serving its purpose.
Speaker 2: But there's no doubt that there's other parts of the
Speaker 2: country which are being let down. Now what that means
Speaker 2: is that local councils, local politicians, if you take it
Speaker 2: to the nth degree, can almost get away with anything
Speaker 2: around the council table because they're not being scrutinized. The
Speaker 2: community doesn't know necessarily what's going on around the council table.
Speaker 2: It might be, you know, a decision as simple as
Speaker 2: local roading or something to do with rates, or you
Speaker 2: know the library. You know, these are issues that affect
Speaker 2: everyday people in these communities and they're not hearing about them.
Speaker 2: Social media can play a role here, but it's still
Speaker 2: in terms of councils delivering that information out, but it's
Speaker 2: still not delivering information that's been scrutinized or mediated by
Speaker 2: a reporter by a journalist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting, like how in twenty twenty five, how
Speaker 1: relevant is a community newspaper like that these days?
Speaker 2: Oh a lot. There's examples around the country are very
Speaker 2: successful community newspapers that still operate. I mentioned the Devenport
Speaker 2: flag Staff. Rob Drink does an amazing job on the
Speaker 2: north shore here in Auckland in terms of delivering a
Speaker 2: weekly community newspaper. I just looked at some of his
Speaker 2: latest editions are up to forty pages, chock a full
Speaker 2: of ads. Now, of course I don't know what the
Speaker 2: yields are on those ads. So all of the community
Speaker 2: editors and executives that they speak to that they say
Speaker 2: they're operating at low margins, so's you know, they're not
Speaker 2: getting rich by any means. But they to tea. They
Speaker 2: all talk about the purpose of the job serving their communities,
Speaker 2: being really closely connected to the communities.
Speaker 1: And so there's still.
Speaker 2: Around seventy community newspapers listed on the Community Newspapers Association
Speaker 2: website that is doing a great job, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't write them off at all. I think what
Speaker 2: we've seen in the recent times is the corporate's kind
Speaker 2: of exiting the business of community newspapers and independent operators
Speaker 2: who have been there for a long time. They might
Speaker 2: be taking on more titles, or there might be some
Speaker 2: new individuals coming in entirely seeing an opportunity to help
Speaker 2: their own local communities.
Speaker 1: You mentioned local politicians and things, and obviously we've got
Speaker 1: local elections coming up and then in general election next year.
Speaker 1: How do you think the effects of all this are
Speaker 1: going to be felt in those two.
Speaker 2: That, yeah, it's a great question. With the local Boody
Speaker 2: elections next month, and again I've been looking at some
Speaker 2: of the local community coverage and they do have extensive coverage,
Speaker 2: whether that's Q and A's with their mayoral candidates or
Speaker 2: their council and that's where it's important that audiences and
Speaker 2: communities here from these people who expect to be elected
Speaker 2: to the councils and paid for over the next three years.
Speaker 2: Gavin Allis in his paper is very clear that he
Speaker 2: thinks the news deserts will become more plentiful in the
Speaker 2: next twelve months and that's a real worry, he says
Speaker 2: leading up to the general election, where yeah.
Speaker 1: He said thinks the term is going to become ubiquitous
Speaker 1: by general election next year.
Speaker 2: That's right, and it is already ubiquitous in other parts
Speaker 2: of the world. You know, there are examples in Australia,
Speaker 2: the US especially, and the UK where there are these
Speaker 2: areas that aren't covered by any form of media whatsoever.
Speaker 1: There's an interesting statistic about The New York Times has
Speaker 1: more journalists than the entirety of New Zealand. It's about
Speaker 1: fourteen hundred in New Zealand, according to a spin off
Speaker 1: survey from last year, versus seventeen hundred employed by the
Speaker 1: New York Times. It sounds like a pretty stark comparison.
Speaker 1: But you know, when you look at the population of
Speaker 1: New York is higher than the population of New Zealand,
Speaker 1: So what is that comparison.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, that is a relevant point. And of course
Speaker 2: the New York Times would argue that it's actually an
Speaker 2: international media company as well, so it's covering the world
Speaker 2: almost But nevertheless, I think it does play to a
Speaker 2: point that one singular media company, the most successful arguably
Speaker 2: newspaper publishing company in the world, has more journalists than
Speaker 2: an entire country. Now, New Zealand because of its geographic nature,
Speaker 2: just our physicality, you know, we are very spread out
Speaker 2: in terms of our population base. So there are pockets
Speaker 2: of the country with tiny communities. I've just come back
Speaker 2: from a road trip of the entire country, and I've
Speaker 2: gone into brilliant parts of the country. Places might have
Speaker 2: ten permanent residents. Now, of course they don't necessarily have
Speaker 2: a local newspaper or a media platform, but in the
Speaker 2: past they've probably been served relevant content by nearby towns
Speaker 2: or cities which have these newspapers where they're based.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd want to ask about the road trip. Is
Speaker 1: there any talking to people on the ground, like, how
Speaker 1: is the general public feeling about this? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And I think this again displays the importance of local
Speaker 2: media in that and for all media companies. Is that
Speaker 2: I was always told by a former boss of mine,
Speaker 2: one of my first editors, the two most important roles
Speaker 2: in any media business as your frontline salesperson in terms
Speaker 2: of advertising, and your frontline reporter. One brings in the
Speaker 2: money and one brings in the editory of the stories.
Speaker 2: And if you can get a business model working hand
Speaker 2: in hand in that model, then by and large you've
Speaker 2: got a very successful business. And of course that's what
Speaker 2: the community newspapers have been based on for many years,
Speaker 2: people who are directly in touch with the people that
Speaker 2: they're writing about. So everyone's on first term names basis,
Speaker 2: they know what's going on that the editors themselves are
Speaker 2: driving the roads that they're writing about every day, you know,
Speaker 2: And so that's a really critical part of what makes
Speaker 2: the successful not just a community newspaper go well, but
Speaker 2: also any media business, is that the journalists, the editors
Speaker 2: are out in that community that they're writing about. And
Speaker 2: so what I my own observations from the road trip
Speaker 2: having been two weeks on the road. It's not a
Speaker 2: long time, but in every place I went to, there's
Speaker 2: so many great stories it I mean, everyone has a story, right.
Speaker 2: That's again another lesson that I was taught as a
Speaker 2: young reporter. Everyone has a story, and if you just
Speaker 2: can sit down face to face, you'll get a lot
Speaker 2: more out of people than maybe a phone call or
Speaker 2: a zoom call.
Speaker 3: Yeah, lock, I probably couldn't have predicted what would have
Speaker 3: happened if ire reflect back on eighteen months ago. I
Speaker 3: knew the challenges ahead for the business absolutely, but the
Speaker 3: continued recession and advertising downtown in the market was sort
Speaker 3: of really pivotal for us having to make some critical choices.
Speaker 3: So I'm still here, So that's a good sign. And
Speaker 3: you're right, you've got to take the wins when you can.
Speaker 3: So it's been an interesting eighteen months a fire reflect
Speaker 3: back on sort of where we were eighteen months ago.
Speaker 3: We had to make some really hard decisions last year.
Speaker 3: You know, the last twelve months really have seen us
Speaker 3: deliver what has been the worst operating loss that the
Speaker 3: business has ever experienced.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. We've seen a lot of closures across basically
Speaker 1: every news organization in New Zealand. Ended Me, Stuffs, tv Z,
Speaker 1: even Iron Zed's announcing redundancies. What are the big drive like,
Speaker 1: is this just a money issue?
Speaker 2: A lot of issues so obviously and for some of
Speaker 2: the business models, it's the advertising red new drop that
Speaker 2: we've seen over the course of the last decade plus.
Speaker 2: End Me of course has launched subscription service with the
Speaker 2: New Zealand Herald, the premium service, so building up a
Speaker 2: new revenue stream in terms of subscriptions, and that's still
Speaker 2: you know, still early days. It's only five years old,
Speaker 2: but going extremely well. But it still hasn't matched that
Speaker 2: traditional print advertising revenue that for so long has sustained
Speaker 2: and continues to play a critical role for the company,
Speaker 2: saying with television, you know, for many, many years television
Speaker 2: advertising revenue was sky high. Nowadays TVNZ's revenue for instances
Speaker 2: in the two hundred millions rather than the three hundred
Speaker 2: or four hundred millions, and so media companies have obviously
Speaker 2: had to adapt to less revenue by cutting costs. We've
Speaker 2: seen that with everybody, and yes, you're right, we are
Speaker 2: now seeing it with our public broadcaster to RINZ as well.
Speaker 2: Government different issues slightly and that it's a reflection of
Speaker 2: the current economy is having to cut costs across the
Speaker 2: public service in rnz's impacted by that, but a lot
Speaker 2: of factors. Obviously, the rise of social media has seen
Speaker 2: Google and Facebook come in and take away at least
Speaker 2: eighty percent of the traditional revenue that media companies have
Speaker 2: relied upon to fund their newsrooms.
Speaker 1: And so these cuts they're being felt globally then I
Speaker 1: assume they are.
Speaker 2: I mean particularly in countries such as New Zealand, the UK,
Speaker 2: Australia and the US and all of those countries, media
Speaker 2: companies are just talking to their governments and bureaucrats about
Speaker 2: just rearranging settings. If you like to try it even
Speaker 2: the playing field up, and we've seen that in New
Speaker 2: Zealand in the last few years where the Fair Digital
Speaker 2: News Bargaining Bill has been a much debated but not
Speaker 2: yet past piece of legislation which would require this social
Speaker 2: media companies to start contributing to the revenue streams of
Speaker 2: the media companies that are relying on the journalism to
Speaker 2: fund their business, to build their business models, and so
Speaker 2: the media companies have been arguing that social media has
Speaker 2: a part to play here.
Speaker 1: Keeping it global as well. It's interesting just looking at
Speaker 1: in the last week what's hapding the US. You know,
Speaker 1: we've seen Donald Trump on Friday flow to the idea
Speaker 1: of pulling the licenses of TV stations that disagree with
Speaker 1: her will criticize him, and then Jimmy Kimmel being taken
Speaker 1: off the air as well. So these were political decisions
Speaker 1: rather than financial. What do you think of New Zealand
Speaker 1: government's relationship with the media.
Speaker 2: Well, I bumped into actually the Media and Communications Minister
Speaker 2: Paul Goldsmith this morning. As far as I'm aware, the
Speaker 2: executives and the boards have a decent dialogue with the government.
Speaker 2: I think there's an argument that the government has not
Speaker 2: with any sense of urgency, addressed the issues that the
Speaker 2: media companies have been raising for several years now. And
Speaker 2: of course, if you remember Melissa Lee was lost her
Speaker 2: role as the Media and Communications Minister last year because
Speaker 2: she was seen not to be doing enough well, you
Speaker 2: could argue that Paul Goldsmith has been similarly restrained. Now
Speaker 2: what's going on around that coalition table only they know,
Speaker 2: but what we do know as a public is that
Speaker 2: you have New Zealand first, which has been opposed to,
Speaker 2: for instance, the Sunday advertising ban being lifted for television
Speaker 2: in the mornings and so that's played a part in
Speaker 2: that being stored. And then you have ACT which is
Speaker 2: opposed to the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. So you've
Speaker 2: kind of heard in cats around the cabinet table in
Speaker 2: terms of all this different possible media legislation. You have
Speaker 2: the National Party in the middle. It's having to appease
Speaker 2: two different parties and in the meantime, these so called
Speaker 2: solutions are not getting passed.
Speaker 1: I remember National were pretty against the potential merger of
Speaker 1: rn Z and TVNZ as well back a few years ago.
Speaker 2: That's right, and of course Chris Hipkins shortly before the
Speaker 2: general election pulled that as a piece of the Labor
Speaker 2: Party policy as well, so it was a sort of
Speaker 2: an Ardurn lead piece of legislation. Hipkins put it on
Speaker 2: the back burner, quashed it, and of course it never
Speaker 2: went ahead. There is an argument now, with RNZ moving
Speaker 2: into the TVNZ building in the coming six months, that
Speaker 2: that may see a lot more cooperation and collaboration between
Speaker 2: the two public broadcasters. That has to happen, and so
Speaker 2: it's almost a merger by stealth where you might see
Speaker 2: some back room initiatives being shared. Initially that might be
Speaker 2: some administrative financial kind of areas, but I also see
Speaker 2: a huge opportunity for the two newsrooms of the public
Speaker 2: broadcasters to collaborate on some major US investigations or coverage
Speaker 2: of breaking store and things like that. And I'm sure
Speaker 2: the two chief executives, Paul Thompson and Jody O'Donnell are
Speaker 2: no doubt talking about that kind of possibility already.
Speaker 1: Do you see any hope in the future of this?
Speaker 2: Always an optimist, always an optimist, and I do see hope,
Speaker 2: and whether that's you know, we've talked today about some
Speaker 2: of the examples at the grassroots community level there are
Speaker 2: some amazing people doing good stuff in our regions and
Speaker 2: in our communities. I see with the likes of you know,
Speaker 2: we just look at the arrangement we're in today. This
Speaker 2: is the New Zealand Herald broadcasting a daily podcast, which
Speaker 2: was unheard of even five years ago. Right as media
Speaker 2: companies have converged and understood through the use of data,
Speaker 2: just audience habits and what audiences are interested in. And
Speaker 2: remember we have real time data now can we don't
Speaker 2: need to wait for sales data for a newspaper in
Speaker 2: a week's time kind of thing. We know instantaneously how
Speaker 2: audience is enjoying or not, you know, a certain platform.
Speaker 2: But at the heart of it, I always think people
Speaker 2: they have a deep desire to know what's going on
Speaker 2: around them. And that's where journalism plays a role in
Speaker 2: terms of making sure that we are you know, it's
Speaker 2: almost tweeted that, but that we are holding the powerful
Speaker 2: to account and that we are explaining issues to our
Speaker 2: audiences clearly and concisely, fairly and balanced and so always
Speaker 2: an optimist, there will always be that opportunity, you know,
Speaker 2: audiences digitally for the likes of the Herald and stuff
Speaker 2: and r and Z and others have never been higher.
Speaker 2: It's just getting that business model right. And you know, yes,
Speaker 2: we still need the advertisers absolutely, but also finding other
Speaker 2: revenue streams to ensure that the newsrooms can stay as
Speaker 2: well resourced as possible.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I think that's a great optimistic note to
Speaker 1: end on, so we'll leave it there. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Great, thank you.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 1: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 1: at inzidherld dot co dot inz. The Front Page is
Speaker 1: produced by Jane Yee. I'm Richard Martin. Subscribe to The
Speaker 1: Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.