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