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Letter 434
A ‘Tipping Point’ for News in New Zealand
“There was no single trigger that caused this,” James Gibbons, a regional executive at Warner Bros Discovery, said.
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Last week, Newshub said that it was shutting down. Credit...Phil Walter/Getty Images
By Natasha Frost
March 7, 2024
The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week’s issue is written by Natasha Frost, reporting from Auckland, New Zealand.
In a few short months, New Zealand is likely to lose about 20 percent of its journalists and television news producers.
“We’ve had death by a thousand cuts going on for at least a decade in New Zealand,” said Colin Peacock, the producer and presenter of the Radio New Zealand show Mediawatch. “This feels like a tipping point.”
Last week, Newshub, the news arm of Three, a television station owned by Warner Bros Discovery, announced that it would shut down by June 30. That means the elimination of more than 200 jobs and the death of one of two free TV news stations in New Zealand.
Today, its main competitor, TVNZ, said that it too would be eliminating dozens of jobs. On the chopping block are two daily newscasts; Sunday, a long-form current affairs show; and Fair Go, a consumer rights program that has run for 47 years.
Many of the shows that so far have survived the ax, like Seven Sharp and Breakfast, are lighter fare, with more obvious commercial viability. “They’re keeping the ones that they can put integrated advertising — basically sponsored content — into,” Mr. Peacock said.
Inside the Media Industry Mock News Sites: A handful of websites suggesting a focus on news close to home have cropped up, but they are Russian creations, meant to mimic actual news organizations to push Kremlin propaganda by interspersing it among crime, politics and culture stories. Trump vs. Biden at the Border: TV viewers were treated to their first glimpse of the political split screen that is likely to dominate cable news coverage for the rest of the campaign when President Biden and former President Donald Trump separately visited the U.S.-Mexican border at the same time. Reporter Fined Over Confidential Sources: A federal judge held a veteran investigative reporter in contempt of court for not revealing her sources for articles she wrote, about a scientist who was investigated by the F.B.I., while working at Fox News in 2017. Losing the Future: Thirty years ago, Roger Fidler was a media executive pushing a reassuring vision of the future of newspapers. Now, amid signs that the concept of “news” is fading, he says he’s “not very optimistic about the survival of the majority of newspapers in the United States.”
At both outlets, executives cited challenging economic conditions and declining advertising revenues, problems that have also hit the media industry in the United States. TVNZ, for instance, expects to lose 15.6 million New Zealand dollars, about $9.6 million, for the year ending in March.
“There was no single trigger that caused this,” James Gibbons, a regional executive at Warner Bros Discovery, told the local news media in New Zealand about the closure of Newshub. “Rather, it was a combination of negative events in New Zealand and globally. The impacts of the economic downturn have been severe, and the bounce back has not materialized as expected.”
What is set to be lost within the New Zealand news media landscape does not seem recoverable, said Duncan Greive, a media commentator and the founder of The Spinoff, a New Zealand news outlet.
“So many really, really dedicated people — some of the absolute pinnacle of the profession in this country — are likely to lose their jobs,” he said. “And it’s hard to imagine they will do a similar job with a similar impact in this country.”
New Zealand currently employs roughly 1,600 journalists, according to the country’s census, for its population of about 5.2 million people.
Those journalists do a lot with a little: Aside from its two television broadcasters, New Zealand has nearly two dozen daily newspapers, as well as two Sunday broadsheets; a selection of newsmagazine brands, including The Listener and North and South; and multiple independent publishers like Metro and The Spinoff.
Smaller outlets are also under strain. The Pantograph Punch, an online arts and culture journal founded in 2006, this week announced that it was going on an indefinite hiatus from the end of the month because of a lack of money, including from public funding bodies.
Unlike some other commonwealth countries — Australia, Britain and Canada, for instance — New Zealand does not have a fully integrated public broadcaster across radio and television. Although TVNZ is a state-owned corporation, it is commercially funded through advertising. (Radio New Zealand is the country’s only fully publicly funded broadcaster.)
Some, including Chris Hipkins, the leader of the opposition, have urged the government to step up to give TVNZ greater support. But in comments to reporters, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon talked down that possibility. “It’s unlikely we’re going to have any further ownership of media assets,” he said.
“Their instinct is not to intervene in the media marketplace at all,” Mr. Peacock said of the present coalition government, which is led by the center-right National Party. “They acknowledge that the news media has an important role to play in democracy, in keeping people informed, but they really don’t want to commit to any kind of bailout.”
It was hard to imagine any individual or corporation stepping forward to save the day or support the country’s news media, Mr. Greive said.
“These decisions have an air of finality to them, and they don’t seem like they’re a cry for help,” he said. “They don’t want help, because they don’t imagine a world where they can ever afford to do this.”
Here are the week’s stories.
Australia and New Zealand
Image
The Benalla munitions factory makes a variety of ordnance, including artillery shells and large bombs. Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times
Why More American Weapons Will Soon Be Made Outside America. With the wars in Ukraine and Gaza straining U.S. arsenals, Washington is seeking to expand production with global partners like Australia.
An Australian Watchmaker Creates His Own Path. Reuben Schoots has been trying to build a business in a country that lacks a horological heritage. It hasn’t been easy, but he’s making progress.
Judge Awards $6.2 Million to New Zealand Volcano Victims. Dozens of tourists and guides were killed or injured when a volcanic island erupted in 2019. The disaster was ruled to be a violation of New Zealand’s workplace safety rules.
Around The Times
Image
Isabella Rossellini. Credit...Paola Kudacki for The New York Times
How to Grow Old Like Isabella Rossellini. “How do I fulfill the rest of my life? That question came to me very clearly at 45, and I didn’t have an answer.”
One Twin Was Hurt, the Other Was Not. Their Adult Mental Health Diverged. A large study of “discordant twins,” in which only one suffered abuse or neglect, adds to evidence linking childhood trauma to adult illness.
A Grainy Photo and a Dilemma: How U.K. Papers Are Covering Princess Catherine. In a country where the health struggles of even public figures are generally viewed as out of bounds, journalists are trying to balance the right to privacy with a thirst for royal stories.
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Natasha Frost writes The Times’s weekday newsletter The Europe Morning Briefing and reports on Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. She is based in Melbourne, Australia. More about Natasha Frost
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